


Phan Oneshot Collection

by littlelionsloves



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, SO MUCH FLUFF, and Cuteness, but it's ok dw, i'll say when they're sad at the start, it's like 95 percent fluff, some sad ones too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 11:47:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 36,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6853360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlelionsloves/pseuds/littlelionsloves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot of fluffy oneshots with the occasional sad one, overall very happy ^.^<br/>(if there's possible triggers the warnings will be in the notes at the start of chapters)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Boarding School

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan has no idea how to get to his new boarding school, but thankfully a very cute stranger (and future roommate) comes to the rescue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got bored and decided to upload all of my fics on here, enjoy the updates of how this is going at the start of each fic :P
> 
> I actually wrote these such a long time ago that I'm scanning through each one and I actually don't remember what happens in most of them wow (also it's 02:02 rn hehehe)

**Word Count: 4503**

**Dan’s POV**

“You want to get off here mate,” the bus driver called, glancing back at me while driving.

I stood up quickly and grabbed my suitcase, dragging it behind me with difficulty and hanging onto a pole for dear life as the bus swerved through the narrow roads and stopped abruptly, almost making me overbalance. I heard a loud thud and looked down to see that my heavy suitcase hadn’t fared as well as me and had fallen over, crashing into the stairs but thankfully not bursting open. I bent over and seized the handle, lugging it off the bus awkwardly and setting it down as soon as I was safely by the side of the road.

I watched the bus drive away and looked around me once it was out of sight, instantly feeling very lost. I was standing on a winding country road without a sidewalk or signs and no visible houses or shops. I had no idea which way I was supposed to go, and I was too exhausted to walk up and down the road to try and figure it out, so I decided to go in the opposite direction to where the bus had gone. I was sure I’d seen a few shops a short while before arriving here, so hopefully I could ask them for directions.

Sighing, I adjusted my backpack and bent down again to grasp the suitcase’s handle, cursing myself for what had to be the thousandth time that day for choosing to take a suitcase without wheels. Why I’d decided against it I had no idea, but I definitely wasn’t impressed by my past self’s decision making skills. They sucked.

*****

After about twenty minutes of walking I still hadn’t seen a single sign of civilisation, and I was getting bored of only being greeted by the odd cow. I was literally in the middle of nowhere, and for someone with the sense of direction of a rock that didn’t bode well.

I decided it was time to take a well earned break when I saw that the road rose up to become a pretty steep hill, so I dumped my suitcase by the side of the road and sat down on it, though it would have been just as safe to sit down in the middle of the road if traffic flow stayed the same as it had been the whole time I’d been walking. I leaned forwards a little and sighed, resting my chin on my hands and looking at the hill, dreading when I’d have to walk up it, bag in tow.

Another couple of minutes of rest later I stood up, stretched, and curled my sore fingers around the bag’s handle again so I could start heaving it up the blasted hill that stood in the way of me and my new school. I’d just started walking when a guy of about my age came into view, dragging a big suitcase behind him and looking royally pissed off.

While he didn’t seem especially friendly and I was slightly scared of talking to him, I really did need some directions - I still had no idea if I was even walking the right way, and there was a chance he was going to the same school as me.

I took a deep breath and walked towards him, waiting until he was next to me before I tried to get his attention, clearing my throat a little. When he just carried on walking, I spoke up.

“Excuse me?”

Nothing. He kept walking away from me. I tried again, louder this time, and hoped he wasn’t ignoring me on purpose.

“Excuse me?” I called again.

Still nothing. I started to feel a bit annoyed myself - how hard was it to stop and just point someone in the right direction when they were obviously very lost? I half ran after him, my suitcase bumping into my leg quite painfully every few steps, and when I reached him I practically shouted it, tapping him on the shoulder at the same time.

“Excuse me!”

Finally, he took notice. He turned around to look at me, a slightly confused expression on his face, and pulled out an earphone. That explained it.

My irritation immediately melted away - he clearly hadn’t meant to ignore me, he just hadn’t heard me.

“Hi, I need to get to my new school - Harefield Academy - but I’m really lost. Could you please tell me where it is?” I asked, trying to let some of my helplessness seep into my voice so he’d take pity on me. It seemed to work, thankfully, because his face softened instantly.

“Of course! I’m heading there too, you can just walk with me.”

I smiled at him, relieved, and we both started walking again, me cursing myself silently for walking so far in the wrong direction.

“So how come you didn’t take the bus?”

His face darkened straight away and he scowled at the ground. “The bus driver doesn’t especially like me, so he sped away when he saw me coming so I could walk instead.”

I turned my head to stare at him for a moment,  then almost tripped over a random rock lying in my path and went back to looking at the ground, hoping that he hadn’t noticed my stumble and feeling my cheeks turn slightly pink.

“Ok…” I hesitated, unsure if it was safe to ask. “Why?”

He chuckled to himself, clearly remembering something, then shook his a little, audibly sighing, steeling himself to tell me whatever horrendous crime he must have committed to make bus driver hate him enough to leave him behind.

“Last year I went into town with some friends, and they got a bit tipsy. Now one of them couldn’t really hold his alcohol, so when we got on the bus and it started jerking around Ben started feeling pretty sick. He managed to keep it together until we had to get off, but then he had to throw up and he chose not to do it out of the bus doors or even on the floor, no, he specifically turned around and threw up on the bus driver. He hasn’t especially liked any of us since.”

I stopped walking and stared at him in silence for a moment, then burst out laughing.

“Can you blame him?” I sputtered.

He made an effort to glare at me, but broke down after a couple of seconds, joining in with my laughter. “Well no but still! He could have just accepted our apologies and not made us walk everywhere for a year!”

I laughed again and resumed walking, suddenly realising I hadn’t introduced myself yet. “I’m Dan by the way.”

He smiled at me happily and introduced himself as Phil. The conversation went on from there, flowing effortlessly from one topic to another until we reached the school.

*****

When we finally arrived at the wrought iron school gates, he gestured grandly to the huge mansionesque building, partially obscured by the trees lining the winding driveway that led up to, presumably, the front entrance.

“Welcome to our humble but actually not so humble abode, master Dan,” Phil proclaimed in a teasing tone, bowing deeply.

It was just how I’d pictured it - absolutely magnificant and ridiculously posh looking, but definitely a place I’d end up loving. Once I got past the nerves of going to a new school and stopped feeling intimidated by it, that was.

We walked up to the building slowly, Phil letting me admire the immaculate grounds without a comment and patiently answering all my questions about the place. I fell silent when we walked into the entrance hall, butterflies churning in my stomach, and cast a darting look around the entrance hall.

There was a teacher lazily sitting back in a chair, closely hugging a clipboard and looking bored out of her mind as jiggled a shoe around on her foot and stared at the ceiling. Phil cleared his throat loudly and she jumped up, turning from a very bored looking person to a strict teacher in a matter of seconds. She removed a pen from behind her ear and held the clipboard in front of her, peering over at us.

“Names?”

Phil addressed the teacher, sighing loudly. “Phil Lester, miss. You’ve been teaching me French for the last four years, remember?”

She completely ignored him, instead finding his name and ticking it off, then turning to me. “Name?”

“Dan Howell, miss.”

“There is no ‘Dan’ on here, so I’m assuming you mean 'Daniel?’”

“Yes, miss.”

I didn’t know if she’d be teaching me but if she was I definitely wouldn’t be thrilled at the prospect. She kind of scared me and seemed like the kind of teacher to give detention for no reason.

She turned back to Phil to inform him that we’d be sharing a room and that he’d be in charge of showing me around and answering any questions I had, then slid her pen back behind her ear and looked at him sternly.

“You need to tell him the school rules too, and try not to break quite so many this year.”

She walked back to her recently vacated chair and made a little shooing motion with her hand before abandoning all formality and slumping down in the chair again.

Phil grabbed the handle of his suitcase again and started dragging it behind him down one of the hallways that branched off from the entrance hall, looking back over his shoulder to check if I was following him.

I hauled my suitcase up again and walked after him a little hurriedly to catch up, trying to ignore my aching fingers and shoulder. Once I was level with him he continued our conversation as if nothing had interrupted it, reassuring me about the teacher first.

“She’s alright usually, she just likes to act all formal and strict on the first day back. She’ll relax again by tomorrow, don’t worry.”

I smiled at him nervously and hoped he was right; I’d never gotten on well with the stricter teachers, so if all of them were like how she’d been I was doomed.

The hallway curved to the right and widened into a broad staircase with polished wooden banisters, the steps narrowing gradually as they went up and curled round.

Yep, this school was ridiculously fancy.

Phil laughed next to me and I realised I must have said that part out loud, making me turn a little pink with embarrassment.

“It is, but you’ll get used to it in no time,” he said, smiling over at me as we started climbing the stairs.

I nodded and we walked the rest of the way in comfortable silence, walking past countless doors and other students until Phil finally stopped at a rare closed door and pushed it open.

“Home sweet home, I guess,” he said, gesturing inside to a fairly plain room with a big window and a wide window seat, two single beds pressed up against opposite sides of the wall, two simple wooden chests of drawers and a single sink in the corner with a mirror on the wall above it.

Phil immediately veered towards the bed on the left, dumped his suitcase at the foot of it and threw himself down on the bed, stretching and moaning at how good it must have felt to finally be lying down after walking so far with a heavy suitcase.

I tore my eyes away and copied him, crossing the room and sprawling across my bed, leaving my suitcase standing right in front of the doorway. Despite the mattress being a bit harder and lumpier than I’d expected, it felt amazing.

I closed my eyes, relishing in the feeling, and even started to slowly drift off when I heard Phil’s bed creak and his feet hit the floor. I turned my head and opened one eye lazily, wondering what he was doing.

He wandered over to his suitcase and hefted it up onto his bed to open it, then reached over to open the top drawer of his chest of drawers so he could start to move his stuff into it.

I swung my legs off the side of my bed and was about to grab my suitcase so I could start unpacking too when someone raced into the room, crashed into my suitcase and somehow managed to somersault onto their back, landing with a very loud thud and a groan. I winced and stood up to help him up, or maybe escape if he looked like he wanted to kill me.

“Are you ok?” I asked hesistantly.

He opened his eyes and looked up at me with a disbelieving expression.

“Does it look like I’m ok? I just completely fricking killed my back because some moron left their bag in quite possibly the stupidest place possible!”

I started to inch away a little, not really willing to come near him as he was bound to figure out who’s suitcase it was once he recovered a bit, and not dying on my first day here was definitely preferable.

Phil calmly closed the drawer he’d been filling and stepped over the stranger’s legs to offer him a hand to help him up, smiling slightly.

“Chris, this is Dan. He’s also known as the moron who’s bag you tripped over, but I’m very sure he didn’t mean to nearly kill you or your back,” he said, turning to me. “Dan, this is Chris, my best friend.”

I came a bit closer and smiled at Chris timidly, hoping he wouldn’t strangle me.

“Hi,” I said, my voice sounding wary to my own ears.

He eyed me distrustfully for a second, but relaxed, reaching out to offer his hand, which I clasped briefly.

“I would say it’s nice to meet you but so far it’s actually been pretty painful,” he said with a rueful smile, apparently over his run in with my bag already.

He turned back to Phil and said, “She’s here,” in a tone that suggested this girl was very important.

Phil stiffened, then brushed his hands through his hair, smiled at me and said bye, then hurried out of the room. Chris followed, staying behind just long enough to tell me that they’d see me at dinner.

I felt a bit abandoned, but I reassured myself I’d see them again at dinner and started to unpack. Plus, as unlikely as it seemed, there was also the chance that I’d make some more friends before then.

*****

A couple of months later I’d definitely settled into my new school fully. I’d made friends with people in all of my classes and no longer had to fear sitting on my own at meal times - I knew it wouldn’t happen.

The classes were challenging but I’d soon realised it was nowhere near as hard as my dad had always made it out to be; I just needed to stay on top of things and pay attention in class and I would be fine. I managed to pay attention most of the time, but I seriously sucked at making sure I finished my homework on time, and that was where Phil came in.

He was awful at paying attention in lessons and I was equally terrible at actually doing my homework, so we made a good team. I would nudge him when he started to wander off to dreamland, and if that failed I would quietly explain it all to him when the teacher stopped talking. In return he’d force me to do my homework, and occasionally let me copy his if I really couldn’t make myself do it or if I constantly got distracted.

Phil was without a doubt my best friend here, and I was grateful for the fact that I shared a room with him and that I sat next to him, or at least close to him, in a lot of my classes. The only problem was that I was also starting to like him in a more than friends way. A lot.

It had started a few weeks into term, when I’d been explaining the science task to Phil because he’d spent most of the lesson daydreaming and doodling again. I’d glanced up to check that he was still listening and quickly lost my train of thought because he’d been staring right at me and it had sidetracked me immediately. He hadn’t looked away, and if I hadn’t remembered that we were in the middle of a science lesson I’d probably have done something stupid like kiss him.

I’d known that I was gay for years, I just hadn’t really acted on it. I’d come out to my parents and I was fairly open about it in the sense that if someone asked I wouldn’t lie, but I’d simply never found anyone I’d liked enough to think it was worth dating them. So it had confused the hell out of me when I’d been happily explaining the difference between meiosis and mitosis one minute and then felt an inexplicably strong urge to kiss him the next. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure I liked it.

Thankfully, it hadn’t complicated things much because I always did my best to ignore the feeling to avoid making things weird between us, but little things like him choosing to hang out with Chris instead of me bothered me a lot more than they should, and the very idea of him kissing, or even dating, someone else made me jealous and a bit angry.

So when one day I wandered into our room to ask him if he wanted to do something together, and instead found him making out with a random girl on his bed, I had some pretty strong feelings about it. As much as I wanted to unstick my feet from the floor and run away from the sight before either of them noticed me, I couldn’t seem to move. I was completely rooted to the spot and couldn’t tear my eyes away, and each little moan that escaped either of them felt like a punch to the gut. I wanted to hit that girl so badly for kissing Phil.

They were too wrapped up to notice me, and when I realised I wouldn’t be able to force myself to leave I did the next best thing. I cleared my throat very loudly and waited for them to sort themselves out.

Phil sat up with a look of surprise, automatically pushing the girl off him and turning to face me properly.

“Dan? What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing. I just walked into my room to find my roommate kissing a girl and decided I’d rather not be subjected to that sight,” I said, trying to inject a teasing note into my voice.

He grinned at me and turned back to the girl to introduce her. “Tori, this is Dan, my roommate. Dan, this is Tori, my girlfriend.”

I had to admit the girl was very pretty - wavy blonde hair and startling green eyes with delicate features, though the pissed off look made her considerably less pretty. She didn’t seem especially thrilled at being interrupted.

“Nice to meet you,” I said with a big (very fake) grin, but she just scowled at me and turned back to Phil, leaning in to kiss him again.

“I’ve gotta get going babe, but I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

“Definitely.”

She left quickly and he stared after her dreamily, lost in his fantasy world again until I walked over, slightly annoyed, and waved my hand in front of his face to snap him out of it.

He laughed and looked at me happily.

“So, what do you wanna do?”

*****

Christmas passed and they were still together. I hated her. I knew I was biased, but I wasn’t the only one to hate her; Chris and I had actually bonded a lot over our mutual dislike for her. It wasn’t just that it felt like our friend was being stolen from us, she also just didn’t strike us as a very nice person. She never smiled at us or greeted us when we came into the room, and instead seemed to have a special glare reserved only for Phil’s friends. How he was still oblivious to it I didn’t know, I could only guess that he didn’t pay much attention to her outside of their make out sessions.

I actually hadn’t ever seen them just sit together and laugh or talk, and neither had Chris. They seemed to be together purely for the physical aspect of it. Strictly speaking sex was completely banned at school, but that didn’t deter them in the slightest. I’d walked in on them accidentally a couple of times, which was how Chris found out how I felt.

After it had happened the first time, he’d found me in the common room, trying to hold back tears and looking completely out of it. It took a lot of coaxing on his part, but I’d finally managed to tell him what had happened, and he’d put two and two together and figured out that I liked Phil. Why else would I have reacted so strongly?

He now proudly called himself our biggest shipper, which I always countered with that he was also our only shipper, but he never let that dampen his spirits. Whenever we bitched about Tori he’d come up with the most ridiculous ideas to get rid of her, and while they never failed to cheer me up, I couldn’t help but wish a little bit that throwing her out of a window was actually an option.

Somehow this led to us deciding to make Phil come to his senses about how crap a relationship it was, in the hope that he’d end it once he came to that realisation. It took Chris a fair bit of persuading to convince me, and even though I still felt like a terrible friend for actually wanting to break them up, it did seem like it was for the better. I’d even asked Phil about it before agreeing, and he’d confirmed that he was only in the relationship for the physical side of it, and that he secretly didn’t like her that much as a person either, so no real harm done. That’s how I rationalised it to myself anyway.

*****

It took us another month but we finally managed it. We constantly interrupted them, we were just as rude to Tori as she was to us, we informed Phil of the fact that we didn’t like her and told him that we thought dating someone who you didn’t even like was an awful idea. Out of all those things, however, the thing that seemed the most effective was making sure Phil and I were always laughing and having fun and sometimes even cuddling when she saw us.

Phil honestly didn’t seem too brokenhearted about it, continueing life as normal, the only real difference being that he went back to spending more time with us. Obviously, we gladly welcomed him back.

Telling him that I liked him was the next step of the plan, and while I thought I knew him quite well by this point, I still had no idea how he’d react to that news, which made that step by far the hardest one. I really didn’t want to ruin how things were between us, so in the likely case that he didn’t feel the same way, we’d have a bit of a problem. I eventually decided to tell him in a note, and ended up writing it and rewriting it until I was satisfied with the way it sounded - I wanted him to know that I really liked him without scaring him or making things too weird between us.

In our next science lesson I slid the note over to him silently and nudged him under the table with my knee to bring him back from his imaginary world, keeping my eyes on the teacher in case he turned around. I watched him from the corner of my eye and saw him open the note, his eyes quickly scanning down the few short sentences that I’d memorised from all of the times I’d read through it to make sure it was good enough.

_Phil,_

_I’m gay. I know this seems like an odd way to tell you, but I don’t really have the courage to tell you face to face, so I thought this would be best. The thing is, even if it probably seems quite irrelevant, it does affect you. I kinda like you. A lot. I don’t expect anything to happen between us, I really don’t, and I hope this doesn’t make things awkward between us, but I thought you should know.  
_

_Dan x_

He glanced over at me with a weird expression and I felt my heart sink. He hated me. He had to.

He read it again and then folded the note up carefully, sliding it into his pocket before going back to his little world of dreams for the rest of the lesson, and for once I didn’t pull him out of it to explain things to him. I couldn’t really face him right now.

*****

At the end of the lesson I hastily threw my things into my bag and hurried out of the classroom, wanting to get to Chris as fast as possible for a long hug and maybe a kitchen raid. I found Chris quickly enough, and dragged him wordlessly to a bench to sit down and talk.

I explained what had happened to him and managed to stay quite calm about it all until right at the end when Chris looked at me sadly and wordlessly offered me a hug. I threw myself into his arms buried my face in his shoulder, letting a few tears escape. I hadn’t expected Phil to be interested, but I hadn’t been able to stop myself from hoping and imagining what it would have been like to be able to kiss him whenever I felt like it. Despite the preparation for it, the rejection still hurt.

Chris let go far sooner than he ordinarily would have, and when I looked at him with a confused expression, feeling a little betrayed, he just nodded at something behind me. I felt someone grab my wrist and pull me to my feet before I had a chance to look around, and there was Phil, mere inches away from me, eyes boring into mine intensely.

“Did you mean it all?”

“Yes,” I replied, barely hesitating.

He paused for a heartbeat, then leaned in and brushed his lips against mine, the simple touch making my heart start beating double time and my cheeks flush red. He intensified the kiss and I moulded myself to him, lips curling up a tiny bit as my heart soared.

He liked me back.


	2. Coffee Shop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Typical British downpour and coffee shops.

**Word Count: 1475**

**Phil’s POV**

I walked into Starbucks for my usual overpriced lunchtime coffee and free wifi and glanced over at the corner he usually occupied involuntarily, smiling to myself when I saw him slumped in his seat like normal with yet another book in his hands. I called him coffee shop guy in my head, and I guessed he was kind of my crush and had been for the past few months already. One day I planned on getting together the courage to actually talk to him, but for now I was content to admire him from a distance.

I knew a couple of things about him just from looking over at him every day when I came in, like how he almost always dressed in dark colours, rain or shine, and how he loved reading but always took ages to finish a book, bringing the same one with him day after day until he finished it. I knew that when he got to a tense part of a book he always sat forward in his chair and that when he finished one he would smile to himself for a bit while he stared at the closed book, and that he liked to listen to music while he read.

Of course, I didn’t know what kind of music he listened to or what kind of books he read, but I would find out one day hopefully.

I took my coffee to my usual table and sat down with my textbook, flicking through to the section we’d looked at today in preparation for the essay I’d have to write later. As much as I tried to concentrate however, like always I couldn’t help glancing up to look at him every few minutes, so when he stood up and left it was no wonder I hadn’t even gotten through the first two pages.

I didn’t come here so often just to see him, but I did always feel a lot less like staying when he left, so I shoved my book in my bag and gulped down the rest of my coffee, then walked out of the cafe to go to the library to study properly.

*****

I ducked into Starbucks quickly, welcoming the warmth as I wiped my face in a pointless attempt to get rid of the rivulets of water streaming down my face from my hair. I cursed the British weather silently for what it was doing to me and grabbed a couple of napkins from a nearby stand to mop my face with.

It had been a perfect day this morning, only a couple of wisps of cloud drifting across a clear blue sky, and then as it got closer to lunchtime more and more clouds gathered, darkening and packing together until the sky had turned a dangerous looking purple colour. That was right before it released rain of biblical proportions, taking all of the poor innocents who’d left the house in shorts and t-shirts completely by surprise.

That included me, so I stood near the door dripping all over the floor and looking around the packed coffee shop. My usual spot had been taken, so my eyes flicked over to his usual spot without thinking, and when I saw him sitting exactly where he always sat I forgot about being cold and wet and started weaving through the tables to get to his, ignoring the odd free seat I passed, my eyes fixed to the one opposite his. Somehow it hadn’t been taken yet, and I was going to blame fate.

He was sat slightly hunched over, completely engrossed in what seemed to be a new book, with headphones on, so I didn’t have much choice but to stand next to the free chair awkwardly until he noticed me, too nervous to just tap him on the shoulder. I didn’t have to wait long, thankfully, it only took him a couple of seconds to notice me hovering by his table and he immediately took his headphones off, smiling up at me. I cleared my throat and prayed my voice wouldn’t do anything embarrassing like break when I spoke.

“Hi, is this seat taken?” I gave a little mental cheer of victory; I’d sounded pretty much the same as usual.

“No it’s not, go ahead,” he said, still smiling pleasantly, then put his headphones back on and went back to his book, leaving me feeling slightly disappointed that we hadn’t talked more, but I guessed I couldn’t have everything. I’d actually heard him talk and was now sat opposite him; both things I hadn’t thought would happen for a long time, if ever.

He looked up again and raised an eyebrow at me, sliding his headphones off for the second time just as I realised I’d been quite obviously staring at him. I felt my cheeks heat up and dropped my gaze quickly to my hands.

“See something you like?”

He winked at me playfully when I looked up at his voice and my heart seemed to stop for a moment. Was he flirting with me? I scrabbled around in my mind madly for something to say, anything that wouldn’t make me come across as insane, and failed completely.

“Um, no… I was just wondering how come you’re, um,” I broke off, casting a frantic glance around me for something to save this with, my gaze landing on the window. “So dry?” I finished, pointing lamely out of the window at the rain still pouring down to show what I meant.

He laughed and reached down to the floor next to his chair, his hand coming back holding a black umbrella.

“You see, there’s been this great new invention, don’t know if you’ve heard of it, called the weather forecast. If you check it every morning you know when to bring along one of these,” he waggled the umbrella, “and then you can avoid… Well, that.”

He gestured at my torso and I looked down automatically to see my soaked clothes plastered to me, my top showing a bit more of my shape than I’d realised. I plucked at the hem a little in an attempt to make it look more appropriate and was quite sure it hadn’t worked when I felt the wet material attach itself to me again straight after.

“Oh haha, very funny,” I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes. I changed the subject quickly, hoping to keep the conversation going. “What are you listening to?”

“Muse.”

My heart seemed to skip another beat – the guy was hot, sarcastic and clearly had an amazing music taste. He was basically perfect as far as I was concerned.

“Oh my God I love them!” I exclaimed a bit more loudly than intended, ignoring the couple that turned around to look at me.

He blushed a little and looked down at his book, suddenly fascinated by the front cover. “I know, I saw you wearing a Muse band t-shirt a few weeks back.”

I felt myself turn pink again at the thought of him actually noticing me and remembering who I was, and dropped my gaze to my lap too.

“I don’t know your name,” he stated out of the blue, looking at me expectantly.

“I’m Phil, but of course I’d suit Thor much better,” I joked, adopting a Hulk-like pose to show off my nonexistent muscles.

He laughed, dimples popping out and making my heart flutter a little. “I’m Dan.”

“Nice to meet you, Dan,” I said, testing his name out loud and smiling; it fit him perfectly.

It was pretty easy to continue the conversation from there, and I’d soon found out that we had the same taste in music, books, films and video games, as well as a shared love for anime and Pokemon, so I could definitely see us becoming good friends if he was interested, maybe more. I definitely liked him in a more than friends way, despite only having known him for a few hours.

The rest of the afternoon seemed to fly by, and far too soon I found myself listening to someone announcing that they were closing soon. The rain hadn’t let up yet, so the coffee shop was still quite full, and most people groaned at the thought of having to go back outside in their summery clothes, myself included.

Dan set about gathering his things and shoving them into his bag and I stared out of the window at the sheeting rain, dreading the walk home. I stood up when he did and watched as he rummaged around in his bag and dug out a pen, then turned and plucked a napkin from a stand next to our table, scribbling something onto it and offering it to me with a hopeful smile.

_07769323029_ _  
_

_\- Dan :)_

“Call me?” 

I smiled back happily, pocketing the napkin carefully. “Definitely.”


	3. Little Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snapshots throughout Dan and Phil’s life together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is one of my favourite ones I've written cos there's literally nothing sad or angsty in it? Like it's just fluff from beginning to end it's great (the fluff part, not the writing, that's still shit)

**Word Count: 2022 (heehee)**

Dan heard a soft knock on his bedroom door and croaked out a weak ‘come in’, putting his laptop down next to him on the bed with a lot of effort.

The door opened slowly to reveal a smiling Phil, dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt and holding a small plastic bag. He stepped in hesitantly and looked around for a place to sit down, smiling wider when Dan patted a spot on the bed next to him. Phil strode over and sat down carefully, hugging him with one arm, his free hand fishing something out of the plastic bag.

“I knew you were ill and all alone, so I decided to come keep you company. And I brought chocolate and a film to watch.”

Dan beamed at him and snuggled in a little closer, reaching over to take the film out of his hands, looking up at him with a highly unimpressed expression when he saw what film Phil had brought with him. Finding Nemo.

“Hey, don’t look at me that way. I asked Carrie what the best film was for when you’re ill and she replied with, and I quote, 'There is no illness that Dory can’t fix’, so here we are.”

Dan smiled cheekily and leaned up to kiss his cheek, pulling away quickly so he didn’t infect Phil too.

“Lies. You’re by far the best medicine.”

Phil laughed and winked at him, drawing him in a bit more and kissing the top of his head before jumping up to stick the DVD into the DVD player to start watching the film, pressing play and gently pushing Dan further towards the wall so there was space to join him.

He climbed into the bed and snuck an arm around Dan, encouraging him to curl up and snuggle into him. Dan lay with his left arm flung over Phil’s stomach, his hand intertwined with Phil’s, and his leg hooked over both of Phil’s.

Every now and then he’d let go of Dan’s hand to feed him bits of chocolate, smiling down at him warmly and tracing patterns down Dan’s bare arm, resisting the urge to kiss him. Phil knew he’d scold him for risking illness if he did, even if he thought it was completely worth it.

They both started to drift off quite quickly, and just before he slipped away to dreamland, Phil kissed the top of Dan’s head and whispered into his ear how much he loved him.

“Love you too Phil,” was the muffled whispered response that was the last thing Phil heard before they both drifted off to dreamland.

*****

“Kill the monkey, kill the monkey!” Dan shouted as he jumped up and down on the couch, clearly agitated.

Phil laughed but did his best, standing up so he could stop being bounced up and down by Dan, pouting a little when he died and turning to look at Dan with a sad expression.

“Me dead…”

Dan immediately dropped the controller, reaching over and pulling him onto his lap, leaning in and and kissing Phil softly, pulling away to look at him with a small smile.

“Me dead too,” he replied in a ridiculously cute voice that made Phil throw his arms around Dan’s neck and hug him closer.

It never really seemed to matter to Phil what they were doing; as long as Dan was with him he felt a hell of a lot happier than when he wasn’t, and the smallest amount of contact could make him giddy with happiness. It’d been months, but that didn’t stop his heart from beating faster whenever Dan came close, didn’t stop him from feeling that same pang of sadness whenever he left Dan, even for five minutes to go buy something like milk, and yet there was nothing in the world that he’d trade it for.

“Love you,” he mumbled into his neck, placing a few kisses onto it in the process.

“Love you too.” He paused for a few moments, then turned his head to kiss him again. “Can we make the monkey dead now too?”

Phil laughed and agreed, cheering when they made progress and sharing little celebratory kisses, and consoling Dan with more kisses when the monkey killed them again. Eventually they stopped the game and just cuddled, talking about nothing and feeling utterly content.

*****

Phil nervously shuffled around in his seat, staring out at the open area in front of him with his nerves building quickly. He looked over at Dan and reached out to take his hand, squeezing it tightly.

“I really don’t want to do the audience participation thing.”

Dan looked back at Phil and leaned in to kiss him softly, squeezing his hand back.

“Don’t worry, I promise you’ll be fine. We’ll leave if they choose us, deal?”

Phil was hesitant, but nodded. He didn’t want to ruin the experience for Dan, but he also really didn’t want to participate - he was too scared. He’d make it up to Dan somehow if they had to leave.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax into his seat, and tried to get himself into the right kind of mood to actually enjoy the experience, looking around for something to take his mind off the nerves. His eyes immediately fell on Dan, and he smiled to himself slightly. He’d found the thing that would calm him down.

He happily lost himself in a world of daydreams, mainly about his amazing boyfriend, until said boyfriend nudged him gently to bring him back to reality when the show started. The nerves came back instantly and Dan, noticing Phil immediately tense, wrapped his arm around him and pulled him close.

After roughly half an hour Phil had been reassured that they were done with the audience participation, and he finally loosened his vice grip on Dan’s hand, relaxing at last and actually enjoying the show. Every now and then Dan would hug him a little closer for a moment and Phil would look up to plant a kiss on whatever part of Dan was closest - his cheek, his jaw, his neck, his temple.

Phil knew how much Dan loved the circus and how he’d had fantasies of running away with them ever since he’d first gone when he was seven years old, so he felt pretty happy that he’d remembered and had thought to take Dan here for his birthday.

“Phil?”

He looked up, snapped out of his half daydream of a young Dan gazing at the acrobats with the same expression that had been on his face earlier.

“Mm?”

“I love you.”

Phil chuckled a little, leaning up to press yet another kiss to Dan’s cheek only to have Dan turn his head so he got his lips instead - not that he was complaining.

“I love you too Dan. Now hush and enjoy the performance.”

*****

It had taken them about a year and a half, but they’d finally decided to tell their viewers that they were dating. They knew they’d sometimes regret having told them due to people leaving mean comments, or just the sheer amount of comments like 'Oh my God my pheels!!!’, but they’d decided it was worth it. They didn’t want to keep having to hide the most important thing in their lives, so telling them was for the best.

They were tired of always having to avoid contact in public or during their radio shows or while filming videos together as much as possible, tired of constantly denying their relationship, tired of carefully concealing love bites, tired of hiding really.

They were going to tell them in a live show and follow it up straight away with an official video telling their viewers.

Dan turned to Phil, tugging on his fringe nervously and tapping away with his feet.

“You ready?”

Phil took a deep breath and smiled. “Yeah. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

Dan turned to the laptop and started the liveshow, saying hi to people and answering a few questions like normal before pausing and saying, “Guys, we need to tell you something.”

He glanced at Phil next to him who took another deep breath before smiling at the camera widely and saying, “Phan is real guys.”

It took about five seconds of complete silence on the viewer’s part as that sank in, and then messages started flooding in so fast they could barely make out words on one before it was replaced by the next message, which disappeared just as quickly. The general gist seemed to be that they were very happy for the couple though, and it took a while but messages finally started to slow down a tiny bit, but when they did Dan turned to Phil and laughed nervously.

“Phil, considering there’s thousands of people watching and probably screaming and memorizing everything we do right now it would be very, very embarrassing if you said no to this, but…”

Dan paused and pulled out a small velvet box.

“I would say that you’re the love of my life, that you’re the person I want to spend the rest of my tumblr scrolling days with, that I want to be there for you for better or for worse, but you already know all of that. So instead I’ll say that I love you, Phil, and please would you do me the honour of marrying me?”

Phil clapped his hands over his mouth and squealed loudly, launching himself at Dan and hugging him very tightly.

“Yes! Of course I will! I love you too Dan!”

They’d both pretty much forgotten the huge audience watching by this point, and Phil kissed Dan passionately on camera, the kiss going on for several moments before Dan remembered the thousands of teenage girls taking photos and ended the kiss so he could look at the camera again.

“Congratulations guys, you’re officially the first people to know about the Phan engagement. Now if you’ll excuse us we have some celebrating to do.”

Dan winked at the camera and ended the live show while Phil laughed in the background.

Dan opened the small velvet box and took out the shiny silver ring inside, showing Phil the inside before sliding it onto his finger, smiling softly.

_I love you my lion._

*****

“Tilly come back here with daddy’s camera!”

Dan watched as his husband chased the giggling toddler around the living room, weaving in and out of the cardboard boxes that contained so much of their stuff.

Tilly ran straight at him, swerving around him at the last second and hiding behind his legs, still clutching the camera and giggling madly, peeking out to see if Phil was still chasing her. When she saw him pretend to look behind the carboard boxes, exclaiming loudly that he seemed to have lost his daughter, she reached up and took Dan’s hand and pulled with all her might, her free arm still wrapped around the camera.

He bent down and scooped her up, taking the camera from her gently and sneaking out of the room with her, going into her room and hiding next to the closet, placing a finger over his lips to tell her to be completely silent. She nodded seriously and clamped her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t say anything to give away their position.

“Now where could my family have gone? They wouldn’t have left me would they?”

When they heard Phil’s voice float in from the hallway Dan could see that Tilly was seriously struggling to keep from giggling again and he smiled at her encouragingly.

“Hmm… I wonder if they hid in the kitchen…”

Phil’s voice got a bit more distant and Tilly struggled even more to not laugh, but when they heard Phil go into the parents’ bedroom she could hold it in no longer.

“Nooo daddy, we’re in my room!”

She ran into the hall and launched herself at him, hugging his legs tightly.

“We’d never leave you, would we daddy?”

Dan came out of her bedroom and scooped her up again, leaning in to kiss Phil quickly.

“Nope, never.”


	4. Toy Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil goes on holiday with his family to a cottage that has a set of doors he can’t open. Naturally, he has to find the key to the doors, and soon realises he accidentally broke into the neighbouring cottage. It’s ok though, there’s a very cute boy there who can keep him company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Possibly the thing I'm proudest of? Idk but it has Lion in it so yh

**Word Count: 3651**

**Phil’s POV**

I got woken up by my mom shaking my shoulder gently and I opened my eyes groggily to see her leaning into the back seat of the car to wake me up.

“We’ve arrived, come on, time to get out of the car.”

I nodded at her sleepily and opened the door closest to me to get out, only to collapse against the side of the car immediately when I tried to put some weight down on my completely numb left foot. I looked down at it and was immediately filled with dread - I knew what was going to come next. Pins and needles.

I sat down quickly and stretched out my leg into a comfortable position that I could maintain for a while until my foot was fully recovered, feeling triumphant when I managed it before the numbness went.

What I hadn’t counted on was my parents, and when my dad stepped out of the car completely oblivious to the torture that I was trying to avoid, he knocked against my foot by accident. Naturally I started making rather unnatural noises as I tried to keep breathing through the absolutely horrific agony, and my dad turned around to look down at me with a very confused expression. He then did the unforgivable - he knocked my foot again, experimentally this time.

When the noises got louder and I started gasping for air he grinned widely and crouched down next to me.

“Pins and needles, eh?”

I managed a weak glare in his direction, then focused on breathing again and wondered if it was worth the pain to move my foot a little further out of reach.

“If you promise to do the dishes for the next two weeks that we’re here then I won’t shake your foot around, deal?”

I stared at him in horror for a moment, then nodded vehemently, praying he’d leave my poor foot alone now. I knew I would regret agreeing the second the pins and needles were gone but I just couldn’t bear the torture he’d put me through if I didn’t. I’d find some way to get revenge, but for now I’d settle for not having my foot shaken around.

Usually my dad wasn’t this evil, we just had an ongoing war over who had to do the dishes - we both absolutely loathed the chore but agreed that it was unfair to always make my mom do them. So whenever we saw the chance we tried to get the other to do them. I’d broken my arm a few years earlier and I’d had a blissful two months of no dishes as my arm healed and I trained it back to its old strength. He’d hated every second of it.

The agony slowly ebbed away and I let out the breath I’d subconsciously been holding, then scrambled to my feet and took a moment to steady myself against the side of the car. When I was sure I wouldn’t trip over my own feet due to lightheadedness or anything else I walked to the back of the car, hauled out my suitcase and dragged it behind me to the cottage.

When I got inside I did what I always did when we went on holiday and rented a cottage or hotel room. I started exploring. It didn’t matter how small the place was, I always wanted to see everything, right down to what kind of soap was waiting in the bathroom, if there was any. My parents were well accustomed to me running around pulling open drawers and opening cabinets and looking under beds so they pretty much ignored me as they went around unpacking.

It was a really nice cottage to be honest, with comfy couches and a nice little patio outside a glass sliding door. Most importantly, the beds were heavenly. However, the part that intrigued me the most were the locked double doors that were hidden behind a striped blue set of curtains in the living room area. I’d tried the doors expectantly, thinking there was a whole new part of the cottage to be explored, but when they’d turned out to be locked I hadn’t given up. I’d gone looking for the key and had asked my mom about the doors, and she gave me a surprisingly simple answer.

“Oh, they open into the cottage next door so it can be an 8 person cottage if needed. If there’s two smaller families then they lock the doors so they have two cottages to rent out.”

I didn’t care if the other part was completely identical, the same urge to explore it that had driven me since I was old enough to realise I was somewhere new told me to go and look. I hadn’t seen a car in the driveway of cottage number two, so that meant it was probably empty and free for me to have a look in. I was sure the key was here somewhere, so it was a matter of finding the key and going in when my parents were asleep so I wouldn’t get told off.

The key was in the smallest kitchen drawer, all the way to the left and pushed to the back.

*****

I snuck downstairs as quietly as possible, cursing the stairs in whispers as they creaked and gave me away, but feeling reassured when I could still hear the soft snores floating down from my parent’s bedroom after each creak.

When I got to the living room area I felt around for the little light that I knew was close to the locked doors so I could stop stubbing my toes on the furniture, only when I turned it on the bright light burned my eyes and I ended up stubbing my toes anyway because I kept seeing bright white spots everywhere.

I made it to the doors and moved aside the curtains, sticking the key in as quietly as I could and wincing when the key scraped in the lock, and wincing again when the door made a loud click sound when I unlocked it. I sighed deeply and pushed down the handle to go in, opening the door slowly and shuffling in a few steps.

When I got in I noticed three things. The first was that the cottage next door was the exact mirror image of ours. The second was that the same little lamp that I’d turned on just moments earlier was on here too. The third was the brown haired boy slumped over on one of the couches, staring intently at the book in his hands.

I realised that this meant the cottage did have people staying in it after all, and that it was probably a good idea to quietly return to my side and lock the door again. I doubted he would have a very positive reaction to seeing a lanky teenager creeping into his side.

Unfortunately, luck wasn’t on my side and the door creaked loudly when I tried to close it, which brought the boy out of his reading trance. His head snapped up and he looked straight at me, sitting in stunned silence for a couple of moments as what he was seeing sank in. Then he flew to his feet and the book he’d been holding fell to the floor with a painfully loud thud, followed by an even louder yell from the boy.

“What the _fu_ -”

“Shhh!”

He clapped a hand over his mouth, then lowered it again immediately to start whispering at me furiously.

“What the _hell_ is wrong with you? You can’t just waltz into someone else’s cottage! What _were_ you _thinking_? Get o _ut_!”

I backed out of the room quickly, whispering apologies as I went.

“Sorry! I didn’t see a car in the driveway and I just thought this place was empty and I really wanted to have a look around and I found the key, but I’m leaving now, sorry and goodnight!”

I shut the door quietly and locked it straight away, sinking to the floor as I waited for my heartbeat to slow down and the adrenaline to stop pumping.

It hit me what I’d just done straight after my heart started slowing down and I swore to myself softly. I’d just broken into someone else’s cottage and had gotten caught by one of the people staying there. Wow I was an idiot. Why had I even gone in there in the first place? Oh right. Because I was an idiot.

I stood up again and made my way up the stairs to my bed to get some much needed sleep.

*****

The next morning I was rudely awoken by my dad happily bouncing me up and down in my bed, telling me it was time to get up.

“Rise and shine sleepyhead!”

I groaned and buried my head under my pillow, hoping he’d leave me be. No such luck. I had a split second of hope when he stopped bouncing me around, but then he started singing. Loudly and out of tune.

“It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new liiife, fooor meee! And I’m feeling goood, ba badaa, ba badaa, ba badaaaa!”

I burrowed further under my duvet and mumbled, “Well I’m not feeling good so go away!”

He didn’t, unfortunately, and after another few minutes I decided I wasn’t going to get back to sleep and threw the duvet off me, swinging my legs off the side of the bed and I staggered over to the bathroom for a refreshing shower. As in a freezing cold shower because I wasn’t awake enough to figure out how to get it to produce hot water. When I stepped out if the shower I was shivering slightly, but on the plus side I was now wide awake.

I got ready slowly, not really paying attention as I dried my hair and ran my straighteners through it, my mind still on the boy from next door. I surprised myself by wanting to find out more about him, as strangely enough I hadn’t gotten to know a lot about him in the few minutes we’d spent together the night before. All I knew was that he had straight brown hair cut in a similar style to mine, and that he was tall, maybe ever a little taller than me.

By the time I finally got downstairs my parents seemed to have given up on me and left me behind, and the note I found on the kitchen table confirmed that.

_To our dearest, regrettably very lazy son,_

_If you’re reading this then we’d like to say well done for getting out of bed today, though you did do so too late to spend the day with us. We got tired of waiting and left you behind. Sorry._

_We’ve gone to do some touristy stuff (you know, old castles, museums, the kind of thing that would make you hole up in a cafe with wifi), so what you do with your day is up to you. We have left you some money if you want to take the train anywhere._

_Have fun!_

_Your not lazy parents_

_PS. What you do with your day isn’t fully up to you, you still need to do the dishes (haha sucker) - Dad_

I scowled at the last bit and quickly decided what the two things I was going to do first were. First I was going to do the dishes, then I was going to go to the nearby supermarket and buying a lot of paper plates so I’d only have to wash up the cutlery.

*****

After I got back from the shop proudly carrying the dozens of paper plates in a plastic bag I ate lunch and realised I already knew what I wanted to do today - in my quest to see everything there was in this cottage the day before I’d also read through a booklet the owner had left that outlined all of the things there were to do in the area, and one of them was a toy hunt that appealed to me greatly. I had to go into the patch of forest close by and take photos of all of the stuffed toys I found there, and if I found all of them - there were sixteen - I got a prize of a big chocolate bar from the owner. The toys were apparently (cruelly in my opinion) hanging from bits of string from different branches, or (crueler still) nailed to the trunk, but in both cases I’d be looking up a lot.

Due to the lack of food in the fridge and my failure to buy more when I was at the supermarket before, breakfast was a banana that I demolished in three bites chased down by a glass of milk, and then I was out of the door with my phone in my pocket to serve as a camera. I locked the door and was about to head over to the line of trees I could see less than a hundred metres away when I spotted something that sidetracked me completely.

Across the road from my front door was a patch of grass with a swing set on it, and on one of the swings was a tall brown haired guy of about my age with a book in his hands. I crossed the road without thinking and sat down on the swing next to his, swinging gently as I waited for him to acknowledge me. It didn’t take long for him to notice a new person next to him, and he closed his book after folding down the corner of the page he was on carefully, then turned his body a little to face me.

“Ah, it’s the burglar. How are you on this fine day?”

He grinned at me and I almost failed to return it because of how mesmerised I was by the two dimples that had suddenly appeared when he’d smiled. Wow he was cute. When I did manage to smile back it took me another few moments to realise he’d asked me a question and I should probably reply, and when I managed to do so without making no sense or my voice betraying me I felt genuine pride.

“I’m pretty good, maybe a tad disappointed that my break in last night didn’t quite pan out how I’d expected. How’s the poor traumatised victim doing?”

He grinned wider and said that he was doing pretty well too, then asked, “And what might the dear burglar’s name be?”

“Phil, nice to meet you. What about you?”

“Dan, likewise.”

We sat on our respective swings, both swinging a little and staring into the distance, neither of us seeming to have anything to talk about.

He coughed awkwardly and snapped me out of my half daydream about spending the day with him lying in a field and staring up at the sky and talking about nothing. I looked up at him and got irrationally worried he might be able to read minds. I was about to test it but he started talking before I could start thinking insults at him to see if I got a reaction.

“So what are your plans for today?”

“Well, the owner has set up this sort of toy hunt in the woods over there,” I pointed, “and you need to find and take photos of all sixteen of them. If you find them all you get a prize of a big chocolate bar. You can come with me if you want.”

I added the last bit on as a sort of afterthought, hoping he’d agree so I could spend some more time with him. When he agreed with an enthusiastic “Hell yeah!” we headed over to the trees after he posted his book through the letterbox flap (why the doors even had one of those was beyond us).

*****

We’d been searching for about an hour and had found fifteen of the toys and taken photos, asking each other questions the whole time to get to know each other better. As it turned out we had a lot in common, from our music taste to our favourite animes to our love for tumblr. The more I found out about him the more I liked him really, and by the time we found the last toy I liked him a hell of a lot.

The last toy was hidden between a lot of leaves and Dan was the one to spot it, and when he pointed it out he probably hadn’t expected my reaction.

The toy he’d pointed out was a little lion, small enough to be held in the palm of my hand with a soft looking mane, and it was pinned to the tree trunk by its tail. The tree looked easy enough to climb, so the second I realised what it was I was off, reaching up to grab the lowest branch and scramble up until I reached the branch next to the toy. I sat myself down on that branch and started stroking its mane with two fingers, smiling widely the whole time.

It wasn’t until I felt the branch move a little that I realised Dan had followed me up the tree. He was smiling at me, his dimples showing again and I had to resist the strange urge to lean over and kiss him. The feeling was short lived but it was definitely there.

“I’m guessing you like lions then?”

I beamed at him and nodded, turning back to continue petting the little lion. It was in surprisingly good condition considering it spent all of it’s time outside and had survived storms and sun and snow. The colour of its fur was a bit faded in places and small parts of the mane were missing, but I loved the little toy anyway.

“I love them. But for some strange reason my parents just wouldn’t let me kidnap one from the zoo…”

He laughed and the sound did some strange things to me, and I tried to ignore the butterflies that started determinedly fluttering around my stomach.

“Hmm, I wonder why…”

He took out his phone and snapped a picture of me petting the lion with a mournful expression on my face, clearly devastated at the thought of leaving my new friend behind.

“Come on, say goodbye to Mr Lion, we got all the toys and I want the chocolate.”

He grinned over at me and said he’d give me some privacy for my final goodbyes, then started lowering himself to the next branch and in a matter of seconds he was back down on the ground and smiling up at me.

“Goodbye Mr Lion,” I whispered before following Dan down.

We walked back to the cottages, miraculously not getting lost at all, instead of the twenty times we’d expected due to the fact that we both had the same sense of direction as a rock. We were following a pretty straight path, but still, we were proud.

The owner thankfully lived in a house just a couple of hundred metres away from the cottages, so finding him to show him the photos of the stuffed toys was easy enough, and claiming the huge bar of well earned chocolate felt rather satisfying.

The chocolate tasted pretty damn good, and we spent more time on the swings talking as we ate it. It took a far shorter time than it should have to polish off the last of the bar, but we both had the same attitude of “if there’s food, eat the food” so we agreed it was for the best.

*****

“Dan! Dinner time!”

A woman who I guessed was his mom was leaning out of the door of his cottage and waving over at him smiling.

“Oops, more food time, gotta go.” He got up and started to walk towards his mom, then seemed to remember something and turned suddenly to stride back.

“Meet again by the double doors at midnight?”

“Yeah sure, be sure to wear socially acceptable pyjamas, you don’t want to scare me off,” I replied, poking my tongue out at him a little.

“You mean you actually want me to get dressed for you?” He winked but agreed, said bye and turned to walk back again, sending me a little wave over his shoulder.

*****

“I can’t believe you’re leaving me tomorrow! Two weeks have gone by so fast!”

“I know,” I said, unable to keep the sadness out of my voice. “I don’t wanna go yet.”

“We’ll keep in touch though, deal? You already have my number and I have yours, and I shall come stalk you on Twitter soon too.”

I nodded, my mind elsewhere. I’d been fighting the constant urge to kiss or hug him or cuddle him in his sleep for the past few days, and this was my final chance really. I was about to open my mouth to say something when he did something that changed everything.

He pulled Mr Lion out of his pocket and gave him to me with a huge grin spread across his face.

“I talked to the owner about possibly taking Mr Lion and got him to agree, so here he is to remember your dear holiday friend by.”

I took the little soft toy from him and whispered hi to him, then set him down next to me gently and tackled Dan to the floor, looking down at him for a second before I kissed him. I’d sort of forgotten about how you generally don’t do that with your friends, but then he started kissing me back and I stopped caring.

I pulled away after a few moments to thank him and he smiled up at me widely.

“Oh, we’re definitely staying in touch now.”


	5. Missing Goggles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil is on holiday and literally runs into someone on his way to the breakfast buffet. An awkward french dip and a pair of stolen goggles later, and guess who’s going to be kissing in the improvised rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally called Stolen Goggles but then my brother walked into my room when I was writing it and saw the title and I got paranoid and had to change it and it happened a year and a half ago but I'm still annoyed
> 
> These notes have pretty much just turned into random facts about the oneshots haven't they
> 
> Oh well, it's 2:17am and this is my only entertainment rn

**Word Count: 3877**

**Phil's POV**

It had been two years since I’d last been in a hotel, and I’d pretty much forgotten how much I loved the whole experience. Almost all hotels had a few main things in common, like how every hotel I stayed at seemed to have long corridors that were perfect for racing up and down in when I was younger and had way too much energy.

My parents used kick me and my older brother out of our hotel room and we’d be told not to come back until we’d run up and down the hallway at least ten times. We’d always race each other, and despite his age and longer legs giving him a clear advantage, little me never gave up hope that I would one day beat him. Only he left for university before I’d managed to make my dream of that glorious finish come true. It’d happen one day though. When we were old and gray, maybe I would be able to shuffle to the muffins a little bit faster thanks to the three year age gap.

The temptation to run as fast as I could down the hallway to the elevator was too strong for me to resist, so after glancing around for anyone who might see me behave like a toddler and checking for security cameras I jogged a few hesitant steps, then gave in and sprinted as fast as I could, arms and legs pumping and my breath coming faster in exhilarated laughs. I rounded the corner at full speed, and naturally my luck at not encountering anyone had to stop there.

I crashed into someone head first, and somehow this person managed to half catch me and regain their balance before they fell, meaning it looked like he was awkwardly French dipping me. I felt heat rush up to my cheeks as I looked up at this remarkably gorgeous stranger, taking a brief moment to admire the tanned skin and deep brown eyes sparkling with suppressed laughter, then quickly stood up myself, muttering a thanks under my breath and walked away quickly to the elevator.

Once inside the elevator I collapsed on the floor in shame and buried my head in my hands, groaning to myself at how mortifying that was. God I hoped I wouldn’t run into him again, because I just wouldn’t have an option other than to just hide in my room for the rest of the holiday.

I kept reliving how incredibly embarrassing that had been while the elevator went down, only straightening back up when I heard the ding that signalled my arrival at the bottom floor. I took a deep breath, pushed the traumatic memory to the back of my mind and strolled down the the restaurant for breakfast with my head held high.

When I’d come down for breakfast on the first day I’d had a mini freaking out session when I saw the buffet, getting unusually excited by it. There was something about having so many different kinds of breakfast food arranged so nicely just waiting for me, and the feeling of knowing that I could have as much of everything as I wanted. The buffet still excited me, but I no longer jumped up and down at the sight, instead choosing to walk by with a plate and only a small smile.

I piled as much food on my plate as I thought I could finish, then took an extra croissant because I just couldn’t resist. Of course it was that one croissant that I couldn’t finish, and I sat there glaring at it for a few minutes as I cursed it silently for having looked too tempting earlier for me to listen to my common sense. When the croissant didn’t seem to start feeling at all guilty and just refused to apologise I gave in and left it behind, going back up to the room to change into my swimming trunks.

The hotel had a big pool that was half indoors and half outdoors, a small waterfall separating the two, something I was incredibly grateful for because of how easily I burnt. My skin had to be so ridiculously pale that even the weak British sun could make me burn red, something that never failed to annoy me. On the plus side, it did mean I had the pool to myself most of the time - there were very few people who opted to stay inside when they could be outside playing water volleyball in the sun.

I made my way back down, thankfully not crashing into anyone again, and snuck a handful of sweets out of the bowl on the reception desk as I passed it, the receptionist shaking her head slightly as she moved the bowl. I arrived at the empty pool and happily claimed the best spot to put down my things, the spot close enough to the water that it was only a couple of steps to get something but far enough away that nothing would get soaked if I started splashing around in the water. Which, obviously, I would.

I was about to jump into the water when I noticed something very important. The floaties that were usually all gone by the time I got here were all stacked in the far corner, just waiting for me to go rescue at least one of them. They were technically only meant for the indoor pool but that didn’t stop any of the younger kids from dragging them outside every day, and because the little suckers always woke up at ungodly hours they got here before me to kidnap all of the floaties, so all I could do was stare at them enviously through the waterfall.

Careful not to slip on the wet tiles I made my way over to the glorious stack and was then faced with a rather difficult decision. Should I take the dark purple one or the green one with white polka dots?

**Dan's POV**

I strode towards the indoor pool dripping water and leaving a trail of wet footprints, hugging my towel as I grumbled to myself about the stupid British weather. It had been perfectly sunny and warm mere minutes ago, just innocent wisps of cloud floating across the sky, and then all those innocent little white wisps had turned darker and had swirled together to form a big menacing grayish purple cloud that stretched across the recently clear sky. The temperature had dropped to be far colder than I liked, and just as I’d thought of that the rain came crashing down around me. I’d leaped out of the pool, grabbed my stuff and made my way inside to find the way to the indoor pool so I could continue swimming unbothered by the cold rain.

I followed my nose to the where the smell of chlorine was the strongest, and shrank away from the gym equipment that I passed on my way there automatically, eyeing the crazy people who actually worked out on their holiday with disapproval. Once I’d gotten through the hellish sight that was the gym next to the pool I pushed the door open and relished for a second in the warmth that was coming from the pool, already feeling happier at the prospect of heated water and no rain.

I deposited my towel and slippers on one of the chairs and only then noticed that there was another person here with me, standing with his back to me as he looked at the floaties in the corner. As I watched and admired the view from behind he lifted a hand and seemed to start doing eenie meenie miny mo, his hand flashing from a green spotted one and another one I couldn’t see.

The sight made me smile to myself and I decided I rather liked the idea of getting to know him, which meant I needed an introduction of some sort. My brain realised that I didn’t have much time before he turned around and saw me, so it presented me with the worst idea known to mankind. But because I was very much aware of the fact that I didn’t have time as he could turn around any second I went with it anyway.

I tiptoed forwards and plucked his goggles from the small pile of his things and hid them behind my back, retreating back to my chair to wait for him to need my help. He can’t find his goggles, a very kind stranger miraculously makes them appear, Cute Butt Guy is eternally grateful and we live happily ever after. Great plan, unless he got pissed off and punched me in the face for stealing his goggles and making him worry about where they were.

Cute Butt Guy seemed to have reached a decision on which floatie he wanted, and started walking back with a dark purpley blue one under his arm, the one with the polka dots left behind. It was only when he came to less than ten metres away that I realised why I had the feeling that I knew him. Turned out it wasn’t that special soul mate bond that would unite us just as soon as I gave him back his goggles; it was because he was the same person who’d crashed into me this morning and made me half French dip them. Once he got closer and I talked to him I’d be able to see if his eyes were the same deep blue that had mesmerised me earlier today or if my brain had stopped recognising faces.

I busied myself with pretending to fold my towel carefully, then unfolding it and draping it across the back of my chair so I had an excuse to twist around and look at him. He hadn’t noticed the missing goggles yet and was crouching down by the water as he gave the floatie a little push so it starting floating lazily towards the other side of the pool. When he turned back to his things, presumably for his goggles, I dropped my gaze and looked up at him surreptitiously from behind my wet fringe, waiting for the right moment to swoop in and “help”.

When he looked up with a slightly confused expression I stood up and sauntered over, swinging the goggles around my finger with a grin.

“Lost something? Need a handsome stranger’s help finding it?”

I winked at him exaggeratedly, and one corner of his mouth lifted slightly, his expression still looking a little confused. When his mouth suddenly dropped open a little and he flushed red I figured he'd recognised me and grinned wider.

“I just keep saving you don’t I?”

He mumbled something under his breath, cheeks still burning red, and took the goggles from me, turning without a glance back and diving into the water. He surfaced again just in front of the floatie, then launched himself up out of the water and onto it with a triumphant expression.

I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to get to know him just because he was embarrassed about the first time we’d met, so I dove in after him, holding my nose as I sank to the bottom of the pool and gasping for air when I pushed myself back up to the surface.

The cute stranger was watching me and smiled a little when I swam closer, which was all the invitation I needed.

**Phil's POV**

As he approached I was struck again by how hot he was, and I silently thanked whatever deity had sent him to me.

“So what’s your name?”

“Philip when I’m in trouble, just Phil normally. How about you?”

He flashed me that heart stopping grin again and answered, “Daniel when I've been a bad boy,” he winked, “and Dan when I haven’t.”

“Nice to meet you, Dan.”

“Likewise Philip,” he said, smiling at me cheekily.

“What did I do to get into your bad books,” I asked, laughing a little.

He swam a little closer before replying. “You took the best floatie.”

With that he launched himself at me and tried to wrestle my floatie away from me, which naturally resulted in a big water fight, one of us stealing it and clambering out of the pool, then taking off with it under our arms with the other giving chase. And so it went until our fun game was interrupted at lunch time.

*****

We both clambered out of the pool, absolutely exhausted and laughing, and dried off a bit. I put my t-shirt back on so I could go into the restaurant and Dan did the same, following close behind me as I walked through the gym area and out into one of the wide hallways.

“Hey Phil, do you want to eat lunch with me today? Like not with my parents but on our own?”

The words sent a little thrill of anticipation through me and I turned back to smile and him and nod.

“Sounds good, I’ll just have to tell my parents where I’m going to be so they don’t think I drowned in the pool or something - food time is the one time they know I’ll show up so they’ll worry if I don’t.”

“Ok, let’s go find our parents.”

The search for our parents proved quite easy - the restaurant was still mostly empty as our stomachs had decided to demand food a while before most people’s, and so it only took a simple glance around to spot them.

We weaved through the tables and talked to my parents first as they were closer. Well, to my mom, my dad seemed to have disappeared.

“Hey mom, where’s dad?”

“Oh, hi sweetie, your dad just left to come get you from the pool, he should be back in a couple of minutes when he realises you’re not there. Who’s your friend?”

She glanced over at Dan with a friendly smile and he grinned back, dimples showing.

“I’m Dan, nice to meet you. We just wanted to say that if it's ok I’d like to steal your son away for a little private lunch, just over there?”

He pointed at a table in the corner that was a bit more secluded than the rest, and my mom agreed happily, knowing that if she was needed she’d only need to cross the restaurant to help.

“Have fun boys.”

I smiled at her and started prodding Dan towards the people I assumed were his parents.

“We will.”

My mom’s voice floated after us with a laugh, “Not too much fun!”

I shot her a wide smirk and she shook her head at me, then went back to her food as she waited for my dad to return.

I turned back to Dan and realised he’d gone on without me and was now standing by a table with a mini Dan and presumably his parents, gesturing with his hands and smiling and his little brother gazed up at him adoringly.

“- and he’d stolen the only good floatie so naturally I fought valiantly for it and eventually succeeded and I slayed the evil trickster Phil!”

His little brother gigged and clapped his hands, clearly impressed by Dan’s brave adventure.

“Hi, nice to meet you all, I’m Phil the ‘evil trickster’ that he 'slayed’. Also, his definition of fighting valiantly for the floatie is looking at me with big eyes and looking really sad until I gave in.”

The brown haired woman I assumed was his mom laughed and Dan mock glared at her, then leaned over to his little brother and whispered conspiratorially, “Shh, ignore him, he can be a bit, y'know, cuckoo. There was totally an evil trickser.”

The boy nodded wisely and shot a smug smile at his parents as if to show off that he was in on it now and they weren’t.

Dan turned back to me and started making introductions, “Right, this is Max, my baby brother, and -”

“I’m not a baby,” Max half shouted indignantly, crossing his arms in front of him tightly and pouting.

“I’m not a baby,” he repeated, turning to me to make sure I knew as well, “I’m already six!”

“Sorry, correction, this is my mighty and secretly older brother Max. Better?”

Max nodded and continued poking at his carrots, his outburst already forgotten.

“Ok, and then this is my mom, Helen, and my dad, Rob. Mom, dad, this is Phil.”

“Nice to meet you Phil,” his mom said, “I hear you two are going to go eat lunch together over there somewhere?”

She gestured vaguely at the other side of the restaurant and Dan nodded.

“Ok, have fun, I look forward to talking to you properly,” she smiled, and I knew she didn’t mean it as an order to come back so she could interrogate me, she was just curious and it was completely up to me if I talked to her or not.

“So do I, enjoy your lunch.”

“You too, bye boys.”

Dan dragged me away by my wrist, and just before we reached the table he had in mind he slipped his hand down a bit lower so he was holding mine and gave it a little squeeze, then let go and pulled my chair out for me, somehow managing to make his half bow ooze sarcasm.

I sat down and thanked him quietly, happily jiggling my leg up and down as Dan sat down across from me. We looked at each other for a few moments without saying anything, until Dan broke the silence to voice a brilliant observation.

“We’re missing food.”

For some reason that made me laugh a lot more than it should have, shoulders shaking and my hands covering my mouth. Dan just looked at me for a moment, then decided the best course of action would probably be to just ignore it.

“Ok then… I’ll go get the food. What would you like?”

I made an effort to compose myself and managed a nod, then took a moment to consider, and the thought of food accompanied by my grumbling stomach was enough to make me sober up completely.

“Something with chicken and fries please. But no tomatoes or tomato sauce, I hate those.”

“You’re weird but yes my… I would say lady but y'know what, let’s go with sir this time. Can you go get the drinks while I get the food?”

I nodded and asked what he wanted, then we both headed off in different directions. I came back first, my task having been far less time consuming than Dan’s, so I put his Fanta down carefully and sipped my Coke while I waited for him to return.

When he reappeared he set my plate down with a flourish and beamed at me when he saw that I was perfectly happy with what he’d gotten me.

“I wasn’t sure what kind of vegetables you liked so I got you some cauliflower, broccoli and peas because vegetables are important, especially with that many chips.”

I grinned and thanked him, then tucked in.

*****

“Excuse me?”

Dan and I both looked up at the young waiter who had appeared by our table and was fiddling with his cuffs.

“I’m really sorry but the restaurant is closed now. There literally isn’t a nice way of saying this, but you kind of need to leave so we can get the place ready for dinner time.”

I looked around the completely empty restaurant and then back at the waiter.

“Oops. Sorry.”

He laughed and assured us it really wasn’t a problem - they just needed to clean everything up and get it all ready for when the hotel guests arrived for dinner.

Dan stood up and apologised to the waiter again, then grabbed my hand and tugged me out of the restaurant, sending a little wave over his shoulder to the staff, and in the direction of a big entertainment sort of room, complete with a pool table and a table football set.

Dan practically glowed when he saw the pool table and looked over at me, the question clear in his pleading eyes. I gave in and came to regret that decision very quickly when he’d won less than twenty minutes later and was having the time of his life rubbing it in.

“Seriously Phil, I never knew anyone could play quite  _that_  badly,” he teased me.

“I’m never playing anything with you again. Ever.”

“Aww, are you a sore loser?”

I kept grumbling to myself under my breath as he half danced around me with a big goofy grin on his face. Eventually I decided there was one thing for it. I put my cue down on the pool table carefully and left, nose in the air, letting my mild annoyance seep through a bit. I was only a few steps out if the room when I heard Dan hurrying after me.

**Dan's POV**

“Philly, please don’t be mad at me,” I pleaded, trying to make eye contact, which was proving pretty difficult as Phil kept hiding his face from me.

“Phiiil, pretty please?”

He still gave no reaction and I was about to start attacking him with hugs when I thought of something.

“What time is it?”

It caught him off guard enough that he glanced down at his watch and replied automatically.

“Five thirty, why?”

“Perfect, come with me!”

I grabbed his wrist again, not wanting to push him too far, and started pulling him after me towards the gardens by the outdoor pool. When he worked his wrist free from my grasp I couldn’t stop my shoulders from drooping a bit, but he solved that problem a split second later by slipping his hand into mine and intertwining our fingers.

I slowed down a little, no longer scared he’d try to get away from me if I didn’t get there as quickly as possible, and we walked the rest of the way in comfortable silence, our hands swinging between us.

I peeked outside to check that what I needed was indeed there and when I saw it I led him outside happily. He followed happily at first, until he realised I was leading him under the water being sprayed everywhere by sprinklers.

“Dan, what on earth are you doing?”

“Shush, trust me.”

I kept going till we reached the middle of the sprinklers and then turned him to face me and took a step closer.

“In films they always have these really dramatic and romantic kisses in the pouring rain, and this is pretty much the closest we’re getting. Even if it’s England.”

He giggled nervously, but came a little closer and rested his free hand on my waist lightly, sending what felt like little currents running up my body.

I looked into his eyes for a moment, the brightest blue imaginable and framed by dark lashes decorated by tiny droplets of water.

“You have ridiculously blue eyes,” I blurted out. It just felt like something he needed to know.

He chuckled and I cupped his face with my free hand and leaned in. As his lips touched mine I finally understood why so many movies used the scene with a couple kissing in the rain. It was magical.


	6. Regrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil gets in an accident.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Phil gets in an accident' well done me, pls can someone help me with these chapter summaries cos I'm actually horrendous at them ffs
> 
> Trigger warnings: death, car accident, coma, suicidal thoughts, almost suicide attempt but not quite, a lot of sad

**Word Count: 312** **2**

**Dan’s POV**

I stared at him through the haze of tears and tried to control how I kept breathing in short fast bursts, tried to stop the room from spinning around me as I watched the doctor approach his still form. I was dimly aware of his parents standing next to me and his closest friends filling the room but I was mostly focused on the feeling that everything that was keeping me afloat was being yanked away from me, leaving me to drown in my personal whirlpool of agony with no-one but myself to blame.

*****

_“Why?”_

_The whisper carried across the quiet room easily, and it felt like dozens of knives stabbing through me. I deserved it, but I couldn’t help but gasp at the wave of pain as Phil continued to look at me with those infinitely sad eyes._

_“It was a mistake, ok? I wasn’t thinking and I missed you and it just happened. I regret it so much, Philly and -”_

_“Don’t you dare call me that.”_

_Again, it was only a whisper, but I could easily hear the pain that was laced through it and it was my fault it were there._

_I chanced a look up at him and saw the tears threatening to spill over, and dropped my gaze to the floor again._

_“Please Phil.”_

_He didn’t even pause with his reply, and once he started the words just seemed to pour forth without thought, each one hurting more than the last._

_“You have absolutely no right to call me ‘Philly’, or 'Lion,’ or any of the other things you used to call me back when we were still alright. You lost that right the second you decided to cheat on me, apparently 'because you missed me’. How does that make sense Dan? If you missed me you should have called me, not gone out and screwed the first person you saw.”_

_He turned and started to leave, but I launched myself forwards and grabbed his hand to stop him. He yanked it away from me and looked at me with so much pain, and it made my heart crack a little bit more._

_“I’m begging you Phil, please don’t leave me. We can work it out - it would break me… No it would kill me to lose you. I love you so much. Please.”_

_The tears he’d managed to hold back for so long spilled over, and he opened his mouth slowly, seeming to consider his words carefully. When he finally spoke each word felt like another knife stabbing through me, the way his voice caught and broke only making it worse._

_“I don’t want to work things out. I don’t want to stay with you. I don’t care how much this hurts you, because it won’t even be a fraction of how much you hurt me.”_

_He walked towards the door again and this time I let him. Right before he reached the door he paused, and turned ever so slightly so he could look me straight in the eyes._

_“I hate you.”_

*****

The doctor picked up the form and handed it to me silently, the parts where I had to sign highlighted with a cross. I felt like I had to read the form, but I already knew what it said and the words were swimming before my eyes making it too hard to decipher what they said. I watched as my hand came down robotically to sign the piece of paper, watched as the ink in the pen formed my signature when I moved the pen across the paper

When I’d signed it everywhere I needed to the doctor gently extracted the form and clipboard from my grip and set it down on the windowsill.

*****

_The phone rang a third time, the melody ringing through the apartment insistently, and it was only this time that I even thought to pick up. I stood up and half stumbled over to the phone, bottle of vodka dangling from my hand._

_“'Lo?”_

_“Is this Daniel Howell?”_

_I grunted a confirmation and took another swig from my bottle._

_“This is regarding your roommate, Phil. He’s been in an accident and is in the intensive care unit in hospital and we need you to come down here as soon as possible.”_

_The bottle slipped from my fingers and shattered against the floor, bits of glass flying everywhere, and the words seemed to knock me out of my drunken stupor._

_“Phil? My Phil? In hospital?”_

_“Yes, we’re sorry to have to tell you that Mr. Howell.”_

_My knees threatened to give way and send me falling to the floor after the vodka bottle, so I grabbed the doorframe to steady myself._

_“How badly is he hurt?”_

_The woman on the phone hesitated for a second, and my chest seemed to constrict until I couldn’t breathe anymore._

_“We’re not sure yet.”_

_“I’m coming.”_

*****

“Call me when you’re ready.”

The doctor walked out of the room and shut the door behind her quietly. I stood up silently and walked out after her, giving the people in there with him a chance to say goodbye in private. Most people filed out with him to leave only Phil’s parents in the room with him, and they all stood in silence outside the room, no-one in the mood to talk. Not with what was about to happen looming over them.

*****

_“I’m here for Phil Lester - I got a phone call and someone said he’s here and he’s hurt and I have to see him, please.”_

_The words tumbled out, one after the other in a desperate rush as I tried to convey my urgency to the receptionist in an attempt to get her to take me to him faster. Instead she just tapped at the keyboard with a bored expression and looked up at me with dead looking eyes._

_“He’s in room 0264 - second floor, room 64. The elevator is down there,” she gestured vaguely down a corridor, “and to the left.”_

_I didn’t even bother thanking her, just walked as fast as my legs could carry me to the elevator, pushing past anyone who got in the way, not caring who it was. Doctor, nurse, crying child, concerned parents, ill and elderly patients shuffling past, they all got pushed out of the way in my impatience. I needed to get to Phil._

_Once I got on the elevator I desperately slammed the button for the second floor and then pressed the button that closed the door repeatedly, willing it all to go faster. Phil could be dying up there and if he was I was damned well going to be there for my poor lion to comfort him and to say goodbye._

_“He’s not dying, shut up. He’s going to be fine. We’re both going to be ok. Tomorrow we’re going to go home and spend the day watching films and we’re going to be great.”_

_I kept repeating different variations of that whisper to myself, slowly convincing myself that it would all be ok. That Phil wouldn’t die and that he’d forgive me and that we’d live out the rest of our days together happily._

_The elevator doors slid open and I stepped out, glancing at the number on each door I passed so quickly that I almost missed Phil’s room completely and had to walk back a few steps. I paused outside the door for a split second to take a deep breath, hoping it would calm me down a bit. When it did nothing to slow down my speeding heart or to help the clammy palms or the dread coursing through me I gathered up all my courage and pushed open the door._

_When I saw Phil all I saw was that there were no bandages or broken limbs or anything really, he was just attached to a heart monitor and an IV and a few other machines I didn’t recognise. His hands were folded across his stomach, and his eyes were shut, his chest rising and falling steadily. He was just sleeping. He was ok._

_I was across the room in a couple of strides and lowered myself into the armchair next to the bed to wait for him to wake up. Clearly something bad had happened for him to end up here, so I wasn’t going to wake him up just to satisfy my own need to see his eyes open or my longing to see the corners of his mouth lift up when he saw me. To be honest, the likelihood of him smiling at me was very low, and would be for a long time, but that didn’t stop me from picturing it and smiling slightly at the thought. One day we’d be alright again, and me being here for him when he needed someone was a start._

*****

It was my turn to go into the room to say my goodbyes. Everyone was sitting in the waiting room around me, and his parents had just appeared in the waiting room, Phil’s dad supporting his wife as they walked towards me slowly. I stood up before they reached me, giving my seat up for Mrs Lester, and offered Mr Lester the barest twitch of my lips as I slowly made my way to Phil’s room.

Each corridor I passed seemed so familiar now, the coffee machine where I got my daily espresso hidden down a smaller corridor to the right just before Phil’s room. I’d practically lived here for weeks now, each day spent talking to doctors and sitting next to Phil and talking to his still figure, praying to every deity I could think of that he’d be ok. But he wasn’t.

*****

_A doctor knocked on the door and took a few cautious steps inside, holding a clipboard to her chest._

_“Hi, are you Daniel Howell?”_

_I stood up hastily and wiped my hands on my jeans, trying to ignore how much they were shaking._

_“Yeah. What happened to Phil? Why is he here?”_

_“Phil got hit by a car. He didn’t suffer any external or visible damage, but there was a lot of internal damage and bleeding and he slipped into a coma. We can’t wake him up unfortunately, so the only real thing we can do at the moment is run tests and keep him comfortable and stable and hope for the best.”_

_I nodded, the rest of the room starting to fall away again as I sat back down next to Phil. He was in a coma? He’d been in a car accident? I turned back to the doctor._

_“Sorry, but do you know where the accident was?”_

_The doctor looked a bit confused but said, “A few streets away from what it says here is your address. The driver said he stepped out onto the road without looking and that she didn’t get time to slow down, he just appeared in front of her.”_

_“Ok thank you.”_

_He hadn’t looked where he was going. That didn’t sound like my Phil, but he’d had a reason not to be paying much attention when he left the house. It was my fault he’d been hurt._

_“I’m sorry baby. I’m so, so sorry but we’ll get through it I promise.”_

*****

I sat down in the same chair I’d occupied day after day for so many weeks, and silently took Phil’s hand again.

“I’m sorry baby. I failed you and I’m so sorry. It’s my fault you’re here and I wish it’d been me. Oh baby you have no idea how much I wish it’d been me. It’s not fair. I know if you woke up you’d tell me how much you hated me first thing, and I know I’d deserve it, but I would give anything for you to wake up now and hate me forever rather than to have you die. Please wake up, Philly. For all of us. Please wake up.”

I watched him carefully, taking in all of the little details I knew so well but that I felt I needed to memorise again now. The inky eyelashes that rested against his cheekbones when his eyes were closed, the slightly too long fringe that fell across his forehead and hid most of it, the curve of his bottom lip and the faint stubble around his jawline.

He still looked like my Phil, but everything that had made him my Phil was gone. I was looking at an empty shell, but no matter how well I knew that I couldn’t help but feel like my Phil was still in there, that if I just wanted it enough he would open his eyes again and I’d be able to see the brilliant blue of them again. But I knew how much I wanted him to come back, and so I knew it wasn’t going to happen. I wanted nothing more than for him to wake up, and if how much I wanted it wasn’t enough then nothing would be.

*****

_The same doctor that had been coming in to check up on both Phil and me every day for the past couple of weeks was at the door again, and her expression made me sit up and clasp Phil’s hand a little tighter._

_“I’m afraid I have some bad news.”_

_I took a deep breath and readjusted my grip on Phil’s hand, then nodded for her to continue._

_“We found that Phil hasn’t got any more brain activity, meaning he’s essentially brain dead. That means he isn’t going to wake up, and there’s nothing we can do about that, and I’m so sorry Dan. I wish we could, but there really isn’t. The only thing we could do is keep his body alive, but that’s all we’d be keeping alive. Everything that makes up who he is has already gone, and so the best thing to do would be to let him go. I know that it’s a lot to take in and a very hard decision to make, but you can take a few days first to say goodbye and bring some things in order.”_

_“How big are the chances that he’ll come back?”_

_“Next to none I’m afraid,” she replied._

_I nodded, almost to myself, and kept myself completely still and silent until she left the room, shutting the door behind her quietly. As soon as the door clicked shut the tears that had been gathering over the course of her explanation spilled over, and once the first ones escaped I couldn’t stop the others, and soon I my shoulders were shaking and my breathing was hitching and my vision was blurry. The only thing I was really aware of was Phil’s hand clutched in mine and his body next to me, and despite all of the times he’d made me feel better just by being there, today having him there was so much worse_.

*****

“I love you Phil. More than you’ll ever know. If you have to die then I want that to be the last thing I said to you because it’s the truest thing I can think of. I love you.”

I hate you.

I put his hand down gently, letting it rest on his stomach again, and left the room to get the others and the doctor.

I felt like a zombie as I shuffled towards the waiting room and towards all the people who thought I was the one who deserved the most sympathy along with Phil’s parents. That was because none of them knew it was my fault he was going to die. It was me who deserved to die, not Phil, and if they knew they would agree.

When I got there the first thing I saw was the doctor already there, sitting next to Phil’s parents and talking to them in a low and soothing tone, but she stopped and stood up as soon as she noticed me, walking over.

“Are you ready?”

I nodded mutely, tears starting to gather again in my eyes as I did my best to push them back.

Everyone got to their feet and followed to doctor back down the corridor to Phil’s room in complete silence. Everything that could be said had already been said.

I took my spot on the armchair next to Phil and gently held his hand in mine, my eyes fixed on him as everything else stopped mattering. All I could see was his chest rising and falling, hear the beeping of the heart monitor and feel how warm his hand felt.

The body was there, but there wasn’t any sign that Phil was still in there. And then, after a few minutes, his chest stopped rising and falling, his heart slowed down until it no longer beat and the beeps no longer filled the quiet room, and my Phil was gone.

I could hear everyone’s sniffles and saw Mrs Lester’s shoulders shaking but I couldn’t bring myself to care. I got to my feet and walked out of the room, down the corridor the the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor. I could remember leaving the hospital but then suddenly I was back in the apartment I’d barely been in for the past few months and I was in Phil’s old room, collapsing on the bed that he’d left in there.

I lay on the bed and weakly pulled Phil’s old pillow towards me, wrapping my arms around it and burying my face in it as I inhaled his scent, letting it wrap around me and dredge up one memory after the other until I couldn’t take it anymore.

I got up and stumbled to the bathroom, looking through the cabinet above the sink for the sleeping pills Phil had always kept there for when I had to go to sleep early but couldn’t. My hand clasped around the small bottle and I pulled it out, popping the top off with some effort.

I watched each pill fall out of the little bottle and into my palm, watched as I robotically filled the glass by the sink with water, and felt the first pill go down my throat. I was about to start swallowing the rest when something snapped me out of the numbness that took over everything, that told me to take the pills so I could go after him, and I realised what I was about to do.

It was my fault Phil had died, I knew that, but killing myself wouldn’t bring him back. It wouldn’t mean what had happened would be undone. The least I could do was keep going, no matter how much I might not want to in the future.

It was going to be ok.


	7. Trick or Treat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan and Phil’s Halloweens through the years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mini Phan is like my favourite thing to write and yet this is literally the only story I've published with mini Phan in it
> 
> Also it was a Halloween fic but I first uploaded it on the 1st of November and I still feel bad

**Word Count: 1970**

_Nine years old_

Dan swung his little plastic axe round happily, showing it off as much as possible, adjusting his yellow plastic helmet every time it fell forwards after a particularly enthusiastic swing. Phil, on the other hand, was busy trying to get his hair to go over the band of the cat ears so it would look as if the ears were a part of him.

“You know that if something happens I have to protect and rescue you right?”

Phil scoffed at that and bared his teeth as he made clawing motions.

“I’m a cat, I can take care of myself because I have claws and teeth and if something goes wrong then I have nine lives so ha.”

Dan shook his head vehemently and brandished his plastic axe at Phil.

“Yeah but in real life you always see cats getting stuck in trees and firemen have to go rescue them.”

“I won’t climb a tree then will I,” Phil answered smartly, and then he continued fiddling with his tail and ears.

Dan got rather annoyed about that, and kept insisting that he would be the one to rescue Phil because that was just how it worked. When he resorted to hugging Phil tightly as he tried to lift him and “rescue” him, Phil’s mom interfered before Phil ended up kicking Dan by accident as he struggled to free himself.

Phil kept his distance after that and walked on the other side of the sidewalk quietly, still fiddling with his hair and the cat ears while Dan continued to show off his plastic axe to no-one in particular. After another few houses Dan was digging through his treat bag looking for the bag of Maltesers he’d gotten from one of the first people they’d visited when he tripped over an unexpectedly raised part of the sidewalk and went flying, flinging his hands out to break his fall and letting go of his treat bag in the process, meaning it sailed into a nearby hedge.

Dan sat up quickly and looked down at his scraped palms, blinking hard as he tried to stop the tears from spilling over, his lower lip trembling. Phil’s mom ran over to him and picked him up, checking the scrapes on his palms and wiping away a couple of the tears that had escaped.

“You ok sweetie?”

He nodded bravely and squared his shoulders.

“Do you want to go home?”

He shook his head and glanced towards the hegde that had swallowed his sweets, and Phil piped up.

“We can go home now and share my sweets, I’ve got more than enough.”

Dan’s face lit up at the words and he smiled widely and thanked Phil a bit shyly.

“It’s ok, but see? Cats can help firemen too.”

Dan laughed a little and stuck his tongue out at Phil, but didn’t object.

*****

_Fourteen years old_

“Please Dan?”

“No.”

“Pretty please? For me?”

Dan didn’t even reply that time, just looked at Phil with an annoyed expression and went back to tapping away on his phone.

“Why not? Give me a good reason. Laziness doesn’t count.”

Dan sighed, then put his phone away and said, “Because we’re too old for this, ok? We’re fourteen. You’re not really meant to keep trick or treating past ten, but I went with you the last three years and just put up with the glares we got from the people at who’s doors we knocked, but I’m done now.”

Phil looked at him sadly but took off his wide brimmed pirate hat and started to pack away the face paint.

“What do you want to do instead then?”

Dan considered for a few moments, then said, “Just play some video games like we usually do?”

“Ok but they have to be scary ok? If we can’t go trick or treating I still want to stay in a Halloweeny mood.”

Dan visibly paled but agreed, apparently feeling at least a little guilty about not going trick or treating with Phil.

“I have Five Nights at Freddie’s, so should we play that?”

“Sure,” Dan replied, voice catching a bit.

Phil smiled and slotted the CD into his computer, doing a little excited dance as the start screen came up, while Dan cast a quick glance at the door, seriously considering making a run for it.

“Come on Dan, it’s starting!”

Dan sat down next to Phil slowly and shot another glance at the door, but stayed put, sitting on his hands to hide how they were starting to shake slightly, betraying how much the prospect of playing a scary game terrified him.

It didn’t take long for the first of the evil animatronics to move and make Dan jump, and they didn’t even get through the first day before Dan was cowering against Phil and whimpering whenever something happened that scared him even a tiny bit. When they ran out of power before the end of the night Dan closed the game down and stood up, taking Phil’s hand and dragging him up with him.

“Come on, we’re going trick or treating,” Dan said enthusiastically, happily grabbing the pirate hat Phil had abandoned earlier and ramming it onto his head.

Phil just laughed and retrieved some plastic vampire fangs while Dan thanked his lucky stars that Phil still wanted to go trick or treating.

*****

_Sixteen years old_

“I still don’t get why you want to go to this party so badly,” Phil grumbled as he tugged at the bottom of his shirt and ran his fingers through his hair as he tried to smooth it down nervously.

“I told you, Ashley is going to be there without her boyfriend so I might actually be able to talk to her. Please just come with me and keep the complaining to a minimum ok?”

Phil sighed but nodded. Dan had been so excited about this party for days and he just didn’t have the heart to disappoint him by not going with him. They’d made a deal though - if Phil went with him to the party, despite the fact that he really didn’t want to, Dan wasn’t allowed to just completely ditch him, which did make him feel a lot better about going.

He glanced over at Dan sorting his hair out in the mirror as he stuffed his hands into his pockets, wishing for the night to be over already. This party was nowhere near the kind of thing Phil usually enjoyed. He was much more of a hanging around in front of the TV with snacks person than an alcohol based parties person. Unfortunately Dan refused to go on his own.

“Let’s go,” Dan said happily, turning away from the mirror to walk out of his room and skip down the stairs to the front door, Phil trailing behind reluctantly.

It was roughly a ten minute walk to the party, and they walked it in silence, Dan clearly buzzing with excitement and Phil retreating further and further into his shell as he thought about the hell he’d have to endure for the next few hours to make Dan happy.

When they arrived at the house the person who’d invited Dan was waiting at the door to welcome people and direct them, and clapped Dan on the back as he passed whereas he didn’t even acknowledge Phil, just greeted the next person who came along.

Phil sighed to himself and followed Dan to the kitchen, then watched as Dan picked up a beer and immediately left him to go talk to Ashley in the corner, meaning Phil had to awkwardly lean against a wall with a glass of water and hope no-one tried to talk to him.

He managed to entertain himself for a while by people watching, but when after close to twenty minutes Dan hadn’t so much as glanced in his direction he decided he’d had enough and made his way through the crowds of people gathering around the island in the middle of the kitchen that held all of the drinks, towards Dan to tell him he was going home. He was pissed off enough to just leave without telling Dan where he was going but a little voice piped up in the back of his mind, telling him he shouldn’t for just in case Dan noticed his absence and got worried.

Dan didn’t react to Phil tapping him on the shoulder the first few times, but did look up when Phil lost his patience and yanked him around by his arm to get him to listen.

“I’m going to go home now, I’m not having a good time here.”

Dan disengaged from Ashley for a minute and looked at Phil sadly and asked, “Why not?”

“Because I’ve been standing against a wall for pretty much the whole time we’ve been here since you decided to break our deal and ditch me within the first two minutes of us being here! Just have a nice night with Ashley and I’ll see you at some point ok?”

Phil didn’t wait for a reply, just turned around and forced his way back towards the front door to escape, ignoring Dan calling after him. Time to go home and watch a Halloweeny film with popcorn and actually enjoy his evening.

When he got home he put a bag of popcorn in the microwave and hauled his blanket and pillows down from his room and made a nice comfortable nest on the couch with his popcorn, already feeling better. It didn’t take him long to decide he liked the idea of watching The Nightmare Before Christmas the most, and he was about half way through the first song when he heard the bell go.

He sighed deeply but paused the film and got up out of his comfortable position to get the bowl of sweets that he’d put in the kitchen for if any trick or treaters came by, then opened the door holding the bowl.

“Trick or treat?”

Dan was standing on the front step without his coat, shivering slightly with his arms wrapped around himself.

“Dan, go back to your party.”

He shook his head, looking oddly determined, and said, “No. Now trick or treat?”

Phil rolled his eyes at him and ignored the question again. “Come on Dan, just go back and have a good time there ok? It looked like you and Ashley were getting on pretty well so go back and talk to her.”

“Screw Ashley, I don’t care about her. She just helped me realise I like someone else. Now just cooperate ok? Trick or treat?”

Phil considered just shutting the door in Dan’s face but decided that he would probably go back faster if Phil just did as he asked, so he said, “Treat.”

He started to hold out the bowl for Dan to take one but before he could do much other than bend his elbow ever so slightly before Dan stepped into the house and gathered Phil up in his arms and kissed him with all he had. By the time he pulled away Phil wasn’t capable of doing much other than staring at Dan, at a complete loss for words.

Then he slowly put the bowl down and stepped closer to Dan again and kissed him, surprising himself a bit with the realisation that he’d wanted this for a while, but has simply never thought about it properly so he hadn’t realised before then.

When they finally pulled back after what felt like an eternity, Dan winked at Phil and said, “Yep, that’ll definitely do as a treat. But maybe stick with the sweets for the other people who come by.”

Phil laughed and quickly pressed his lips to Dan’s again, then dragged him into the living room after him for more treats.


	8. The One That Got Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based around the song.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idk what it is about this song but I've always loved it a shit tonne so this is the only song fic I've ever done and am likely to do - it's actually sort of based on the music video for it too so maybe go watch that?
> 
> Trigger warnings: major character death and I think that's it really

**Word Count:** **1479**

**Dan’s POV**

_Summer after high school when we first met_  
_We’d make_ _out in your Mustang to Radiohead_  
_And on my 18th Birthday_  
_We got matching tattoos_

“Come on Dan, you know you want to get one,” Phil said, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind and swaying us slightly from side to side.

I couldn’t really deny it, I did want one and Phil could see the longing on my face clear as day. I looked at the drawings that covered the walls of the tattoo parlor, and tried to picture myself coming home with one of them on my arm, visible to anyone who looked. I imagined the look on my mom’s face when she saw it, the gasp and the horror in her eyes that would accompany it, and shook my head quickly.

“Nah, I’m alright, but you go ahead and get one, I don’t mind,” I said, trying to force some enthusiasm into my voice. Judging by the look Phil gave me I failed completely.

“We both know you want one, so why not get one?”

“My mom will die of a heart attack. And then she’ll come back and kill me.”

Phil laughed and grabbed my hand to tug me over to another drawing covered wall, these drawings less based around mythical creatures, just simple patterns. He pointed a couple out and smiled at me widely when he saw how much I was considering it.

“Go on,” he encouraged me. “It’s your eighteenth birthday, you’re an adult now. Your mom doesn’t have much of a say in it anymore. Live a little.”

One of the things I loved about Phil was that he always knew when to keep pushing me and when to back off. He knew I loved the idea of getting a tattoo and just needed some encouragement, so he gave it to me without me having to ask.

“We’ll get matching ones, ok?”

I laughed at that and finally agreed, pointing out the design that stood out to me the most.

“That one?”

He smiled at me and kissed me on the cheek. “That one.”

_Used to steal your parents’ liquor_  
_And climb to the roof_  
_Talk about our future_  
_Li_ _ke we had a clue_  
_Never planned that one day_  
_I_ _’d be losing you_

“She was so mad! She looked like she was going to rip my guts out,” I giggled, moving to lean against Phil and throwing out my arm to catch myself when I missed his shoulder.

“Why? It’s not like we got you a butterfly tramp stamp,” he slurred, eyes suddenly lighting up. “I have an idea! Let’s get you a butterfly tramp stamp and see how she reacts then!”

He looked so proud of himself for thinking of the idea, and I couldn’t help but laugh at his expression, tipping my head back and looking at the cloud covered sky, the moon barely visible.

“Hey Dan,” he mumbled, moving closer. “I love you.”

“Love you too lion.”

I lowered myself to my back carefully so I was lying flat on the roof with my knees bent, one arm supporting my head. Phil seemed to like the new position and immediately lowered his head onto my stomach, finding my hand in the dark and twisting his fingers with mine, our linked hands resting on his chest.

“I can’t wait to live together.”

“I know. Neither can I. First thing we’re doing is stocking the liquor cabinet and getting a good collection of music together, ok?”

He chuckled and moved my hand hand to press a kiss to the back of it. “Anything for you.”

_In another life_  
_I would be your guy_  
_We’d keep all our promises_  
_Be us against the world_

_In another life_  
_I would make you stay_  
_So I don’t have to say_  
_You were the one that got away_  
_The one that got away_

I sobbed into Phil’s chest, clutching at the fabric of his shirt and trying to calm down as he held me and rocked us back and forth, murmuring comforting words into my hair.

“Why are they always so horrible to me?” I forced the words out, choking on them and gasping for air.

“I don’t know,” he whispered, holding me even tighter. “But they don’t matter, ok? It’s us against everyone else, our opinions are the only ones that matter, and I disagree with  _everything_  they said.”

“But they’re my parents! Of course I care about what they say! They just keep telling me my artwork is shit and that it’s never going to work out, what if they’re right?”

“They’re just not. It’s going to work out perfectly,” he said firmly, and kept rocking me until the tears stopped.

_I was June and you were my Johnny Cash_  
_Never one without the other, we made a pact_  
_Sometimes when I miss you_  
_I put those records on_

I sat in the middle of my bed and sobbed into the jumper that had almost completely lost his scent after weeks of me hugging it to myself every night, barely registering the familiar music that came from the speakers in the corner. It was my fault he was gone.

Each day I woke up with puffy red eyes, splashed water on my face and then I’d push back the horrible, aching sadness that settled over me at night. I poured all of the raw pain into my artwork, going about getting myself noticed with ten times as much vigour as I had before. I was going to succeed, for him.

Each night I climbed into bed with his favourite jumper and the tears would start almost immediately. I’d cry myself to sleep every time, always feeling exhausted after what felt like centuries of my shoulders shaking and my vision blurring as I choked on my sobs.

Nothing made me really feel anything but numb. Nothing but the soul crushing pain thay came with Phil’s loss.

I couldn’t really handle it.

_Someone said you had your tattoo removed_  
_Saw you downtown singing the Blues_  
_It’s time to face the music_  
_I’m no longer your muse_

There were ghosts of him everywhere I went. A person in the street with a similar haircut. A shop assistant with almost the same blue eyes, but not quite. A busker in town with the same husky voice, but not quite as meaningful.

Each and every one of them left me fighting back tears and gasping for breath, my head spinning. I couldn’t get over him.

_But in another life_  
_I would be your_ _guy_  
_We’d keep all our promises_  
_Be us against the world_

I crouched down in front of his grave, laying down the new flowers gently and brushing the dying old ones aside along with the autumn leaves that had started gathering on and around his grave.

I traced his name with my fingertips like I did every time, then smoothed my hand over the death date wishing I could erase it and replace it with a different date in a few decade’s time. I’d even take just a few days at this point.

“I’m getting better at it Phil. I’m trying so hard to keep going for you, I promise.”

_In another life_  
_I would make you stay_  
_So I don’t have to say_  
_You were the one that got away_  
_The one that got away_  
_The_ _one, the one, the one_  
_The one that got away_

“Why did I let you leave? Why didn’t I make you stay so we could talk it out properly?”

I sat with my back to the gravestone and doodled in the dirt idly with a small twig, imagining Phil’s response.

_“You couldn’t have known though, could you? Loads of people storm out. Loads of people come back. I just didn’t. But it wasn’t your fault, I promise.”_

“It’s still not fair,” I whispered, and erased the eyes I’d drawn in the dirt before I stood up and walked away. His eyes.

_All this money can’t buy me a time machine_  
_Can’t replace you with a million rings_  
_I should’ve told you what you meant to me_  
_‘Cause now I pay the price_

“I don’t think I ever told you this properly, but the only reason I kept going with the art stuff was you. Your encouragements, your constant support, how understanding and helpful you were all the time. Thank you.”

I’d give it all up without thinking twice if it meant getting him back.

_In another life_  
_I would be your_ _guy_  
_We’d keep all our promises_  
_Be us against the world_

_In another life_  
_I would make you stay_  
_So I don’t have to say_  
_You were the one that got away_  
_The one that got away_


	9. Candy Canes and Stockings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan gets woken up rudely by his best friend because she’s decided to do a huge secret santa for everyone in their uni hall, and Dan gets Phil. Only problem is, he has no idea who the fuck Phil is or what he’d like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who had a Secret Santa with no idea who that person was (I got them a lot of chocolate and hoped)

**Word Count: 2809**

**Dan’s POV**

Lydia had been pounding on my door for what had to have been at least a small eternity, waiting until I just about managed to start drifting off again to start banging her fist against it to startle me awake again. She had now decided just trying to give me a headache wasn’t enough and was yelling through the door.

“Dan, I know you’re in there so quit pretending you’re not and get your ass out of bed. We’re having a dorm meeting downstairs and I need everyone to be there, so get up already!”

I burrowed further under my mound of blankets and tried hiding my head under my pillow in the hope of drowning her out, still hoping she’d give up soon.

“If you aren’t downstairs in the next five minutes I will make sure every single other person in our dorm is and I will tell them what happened at the Halloween party.”

I jackknifed off the bed and crossed the small room in a couple of strides, yanking the door open with a scowl. She smirked back at me smugly, clearly pleased that she’d gotten me out of bed.

“Why the hell are we having a dorm meeting? We never have those.”

“Come downstairs and you’ll see,” she chirped happily and started walking to the next victim’s room. “Maybe get dressed first though.”

I looked down at my bare chest and boxers and glared at her back, then slammed my door shut again and eyed my bed. If I lay back down I was sure I wouldn’t get back up, but it was just so tempting…

My brain replayed the Halloween party events quickly and I imagined having to meet people’s eyes over breakfast or when passing them on the way to the bathroom and changed my mind. Too embarrassing, and definitely not worth the extra couple of hours in bed, so I grabbed the nearest pair of sweatpants and t-shirt and made my way downstairs less than a minute later.

I was one of the first people down there and when I glanced round at the other people from the door I was kind of pleased to see that I wasn’t the only one who didn’t appreciate being woken up so early on a Saturday morning, and had to suppress a giggle when I saw that one guy had taken his pillow and duvet with him and had continued sleeping in one of the armchairs. It made me feel less lazy in comparison.

I settled myself in the nearest available armchair and waited for Lydia to come down to explain why she’d dragged everyone out of their beds, amusing myself with scenarios for how I could best annoy her if what she had to say wasn’t worth being woken up. The others seemed to be having similar thoughts and I was about to ask the girl next to me what she thought would be the best approach when Lydia walked in and cleared her throat, not seeming the slightest bit fazed when she saw everyone look back at her with stony and half asleep expressions.

“I would do a more in depth explanation but you all still seem to be in dreamland, so the basic version is that we’re doing a dorm Secret Santa because no-one seems to know each other and this might be a good way to start changing that. Have fun,” she said, smiling brightly.

I kind of liked the idea and looked around me at the others to gauge how they felt about it. A few were smiling slightly and nodding at each other a little as if reaching a mutual agreement that while she really needed to work on her timing, Lydia could stay. Looking across the room I caught eyes with by far the cutest guy in the dorm, maybe even at the university, and dropped my gaze almost immediately as I felt myself go bright red.

I knew literally nothing about him, just that he always seemed to get me to go all flustered and unable to act like a normal human being around him and that he was quiet most of the time. The only times I’d seen him in the common room he seemed to have a book with him and a cup of tea, and once he’d been wearing glasses. It’d been a few months since he’d started living here, but I still hadn’t worked up the courage to introduce myself to him. I’d tried one time, when I’d come back slightly tipsy and had found him in the kitchen getting a glass of water. It had ended with me giggling uncontrollably before I even got to the saying hello part and having to leave before I collapsed because of laughter. He’d waited quite patiently with his glass of water until I’d left, even nodding bye at me with a smile.

Wow I was an idiot.

I was snapped out of my train of thoughts when a Santa hat was shoved under my nose by an impatient looking Lydia, and it took me embarrassingly long to figure what she expected me to do. I went red again and reached into the hat, quickly picking out the first bit of paper my fingers touched and looking down at it to avoid making eye contact with anyone.

_Phil_

I looked around the room blankly and realised that Lydia kind of had a point. I only knew a handful of people by name, mostly because they were the people who cooked most often and so had their names up on the whiteboard in the kitchen the most. I knew that Drew made an amazing chicken stir fry but other than that I knew nothing about him. When I’d first come here I hadn’t known anyone but Lydia, so I’d given most people nicknames, but I doubted Drew would have appreciated me calling him Fuzzball because of his hair.

Considering I had to get this Phil a present it was kind of problematic that I had no idea who he was. Lydia probably knew, so I waited until all those who had been woken up filed out of the door to return to their beds, then beckoned her over.

“Any idea who this is?”

I showed her the slip of paper and hoped she was done being mean to me for the day and would just tell me without riddles.

She laughed and said, “How do you spend that much time staring at him with your jaw on the floor without knowing who he is?”

I glanced across the room at the cute guy questioningly, and when she nodded I ducked my head down and tried to hide behind my fringe.

“Is it really that obvious?”

She laughed again and stuck her tongue out at me, then happily bounced out of the room so I was left to think about what the hell to get the guy I liked but didn’t know anything about. I forced myself to get off the armchair and hauled myself up the stairs to my room to think of a battle plan. It would have been a lot easier if simply asking him what he’d like for Christmas had been an option, but that would have defeated the purpose of Secret Santa just a little.

I came up with a compromise and scribbled a note onto the old receipt for an extra large bag of Maltesers I found in the pocket of my sweatpants and hoped he’d answer.

_Dear Phil,_   
_I have absolutely no idea what kind of things you’re into and I kinda need to think up a good Secret Santa gift for you. Any chance you can give me a couple of clues?_   
_Your Secret Santa_

The note was left on the kitchen table under the pretence of getting myself an apple, and I couldn’t help but feel a little ninja like as I climbed back up the stairs with my apple.

*****

When I went back down to the kitchen in the late afternoon to make myself a sandwich for lunch, now having caught up on sleep, I saw that my note had been replaced with a more neatly written one. After a careful glance around me to check that no-one was around to see my I crept a bit closer and picked up the note for a closer look.

_Dear Secret Santa,_   
_Nope, that would be cheating. Have fun stalking me ^.^_   
_Phil (your soon to be stalkee)_

Well there went my Plan A, and I didn’t actually have a Plan B yet. Time to go pester Lydia until she helped me out.

“Lydiaaaa,” I moaned, lying spreadeagled on her floor as she regarder me with an amused expression from her bed. “Help meeee.”

“Hey he told you to go stalk him, so go stalk him and stop bugging me about it - I know his name and that he has a thing for lions, but that’s it. Now unless you wanna watch Marley and Me with me, get out.”

I grinned at her widely and hugged her.

“Thank you! A toy lion shall be one of the things then.”

I left her room quickly and went back to mine to think some more. I knew he always seemed to be wearing odd socks, so a small lion and a pair of odd socks maybe?

I sucked at presents.

*****

The day before Secret Santa I finally gave up on trying to find the perfect gift for him and just went to the nearest supermarket in the hope I could find something he might like there.

I passed through the clothing section at the back first as I looked for socks, selecting a pack of four pairs of animal socks; one with giraffes, one with monkeys, one with elephants and one with bees. The plan was to only give him one sock from each pair so he’d be forced to wear them as odd socks, not that it was likely that he would do otherwise if I gave him both socks from each pair.

Next up was the toiletries aisle, just because it happened to be nearest to the clothing one. I felt inexplicably drawn to the multicoloured rubber ducks, so they went into the basket, as well as a travel sized bottle of raspberry shower gel as a joke. Fingers crossed he didn’t think I was trying to hint that he needed to wash more - it always seemed that way when I saw one of my female friends give her friends things like bath bombs. I knew it was always meant as a genuinely nice gift, but if someone gave me a similar gift part of me would most probably feel offended.

Something I’d almost always included in any Christmas present was a small festive item, ranging from a bauble or some tinsel or a little chocolate Santa, so when I passed a display with candy canes on my way to the childrens’ toys it felt only natural to put one of those in my basket too.

While I knew there were always small bears and rabbits and sometimes ducks, I doubted they’d sell toy lions but it was worth having a look. When I didn’t spot any straight away I even got together the courage to ask one of the people who worked there as I still saw the lion as the key part of the present. The assistant told me that while unfortunately they didn’t sell them, one of the charity shops across the road might, so I went there after buying the items I’d gathered together from the supermarket, along with some red and green festive wrapping paper I saw by the checkout.

I looked around the first charity shop quickly and didn’t see anything lion-like, so I asked the person behind the till and explained that anything with a lion would do really. Despite the shop being quite busy she went into the back of the shop for me and came back after almost ten minutes, holding a small lion key ring up proudly.

“Thank you so much! It’s perfect,” I beamed.

I bought it and carefully placed it in the bag with the other gifts and went back, feeling pretty damn pleased with myself for managing to get together an actually ok collection of gifts such a short time before the deadline.

*****

I stumbled into the common room with my present filled makeshift stocking for Phil and dumped it on the coffee table tiredly, sitting down against the side of an armchair and leaning my head back so I could close my eyes for a few moments.

I’d gotten distracted last night when I’d been supposed to wrap Phil’s presents and had ended up playing the Sims 4 game until some point in the morning, when I’d collapsed on my bed only to realise I still needed to sort out Phil’s presents. I’d messily wrapped them all separately, the wrapping probably consisting more of sellotape than wrapping paper when I’d stuck on more to cover up the places the paper had torn or hadn’t quite covered the whole thing.

Then when I’d finally finished my sleep deprived brain had decided I needed something to put all the badly wrapped gifts in, so I’d gotten a clean pillowcase from the drawer under my bed and a felt tip, so the gifts were now all in a pillow case that I’d drawn a stocking outline on with a little Santa hat doodle on one of the corners for good measure. So if he didn’t like the things I’d gotten him I was kind of screwed because the wrapping definitely wasn’t going to be winning me points anytime soon.

After a few minutes Lydia clapped her hands together to get everyone’s attention, and I half opened my eyes so I could just about make out what was happening.

“Present time,” she half sang. “It looks like everyone managed it so we’ll do this quickly and then you can all go back to packing and saying goodbye.”

She picked up the gift at the top of the pile and called out the name so the person it was meant for could go get it. Almost all the presents had been given to their recipients when she got to Phil’s present.

Instead of picking it up straight away and calling out his name she stared at it for a moment, lips twitching upwards a little as she shook her head. She bent down and picked up the pillow case by the corners and turned it around so she could see who it was meant for.

“Oh dear,” she sighed, then looked at me with an expression somewhere between pity and amusement. “Dan, do you mind telling me who ‘the cute one I wanna date’ is?”

Everyone laughed and I felt my cheeks start burning, so I hid my head in my arms and took a few moments to let myself pretend that hadn’t just happened. I had completely forgotten about writing that.

When the laughter died down I raised my head so that my eyes were visible, so when I spoke my voice sounded muffled.

“It’s meant to say 'Phil’.”

Lydia smirked at me and took the weird stocking to Phil, who was blushing just as hard as I was. I glared at Lydia’s back - this was her fault. She’d known who I was meant to buy a present for, so she could have just given it to him without saying anything and left him to see that without ever needing to know who had written it.

The rest of the presents went by without me registering much, my mind too busy planning how best to move to Kenya without people noticing, so when Lydia announced that all the presents had been handed out I scrambled to my feet quickly and was about to escape when Phil appeared in front of me, eyes wide. Crap.

“Um… Hi,” I said after an awkward pause.

“Hi,” he replied, then went quiet again.

He looked down at his feet and moved to the side a bit so we were no longer in people’s way, plucking at my sleeve a bit to get me to do the same. He took a deep breath and looked up at me again, making my stomach do little flips.

“Did you mean what you wrote on the…,” he looked down at the pillow case he still held in his hand. “Stocking?”

I grinned sheepishly and nodded slightly.

“In that case,” he paused again. “Wanna get coffee?”

“Hell yes,” I replied without thinking. “I mean, yeah sure.”

He laughed and slipped his hand in mine, then tugged me from the room.

“By the way, I love the little lion.”

Apparently I didn’t suck at presents quite as much as I thought.


	10. Stranger to Boyfriend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A very anxious Phil gets introduced to someone at a party a couple of minutes before he leaves, and is quite confused when he gets a text from an unknown number. Turns out the someone is a very cute person who would quite like a date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is almost 3am and my laptop is starting to make this wheezing sound and this would be so much easier if my wifi wasn't so shit rn

**Word Count: 3049**

**Phil’s POV**

I clutched my drink tightly with both hands and tried to hide how nervous I was. I hated being surrounded by so many people I didn’t know, and I couldn’t stop feeling like I might be sick despite a friendly stranger making me feel a bit calmer by talking to me. I nodded at him politely every now and then and did my best to actually talk to him, but I was too anxious to manage it well.

“Oh this is Dan by the way,” the friendly stranger said, pointing at, presumably, a friend of his that had popped up next to him.

I glanced his way distractedly and forced my lips into something that could pass for a smile, looking over his shoulder in the hope Peej would miraculously appear behind him to save me from having to talk to more people. They seemed lovely, but I found it a bit too nerve wracking to talk to them without the support of someone I knew. I tended to be better at talking to new people over the internet, which was coincidentally also how I’d befriended Peej.

“Nice to meet you,” Dan said quietly.

I looked at a spot somewhere to his left and responded equally quietly, too uncomfortable to make eye contact.

He said something else but I was too busy trying to keep breathing normally to register what it was, so I just nodded and hoped that would pass for a good answer. My eyes kept darting around looking for Pj and I was holding my drink so tightly I was slightly scared I would break the glass. I wanted to escape so badly but something in me tried to stop me from leaving, telling me to wait for Pj and that it’d be fine then and that I shouldn’t be rude.

I held on for another few minutes until the glass started to slip from my grip constantly, my palms too sweaty for me to hold onto it properly.

“I need to go, I’m sorry,” I whispered, setting my drink down on the nearest table shakily and turning to leave.

“Could I have your number please?”

I registered a phone being thrust in front of me with a new contact screen up, so I tapped my number in with trembling fingers and handed it back before I dropped it. I heard him calling goodbye after me and raised my hand in a wave directed at somewhere behind me, pushing my way through the crowds of people until I reached the front door.

I shouldered my way past the small gaggle of people standing in front of it and yanked it open, rushing outside. My legs gave out before I made it off the front porch and I sat down on a porch step, bringing my knees up to rest my head between them as I gulped in the cool air. Slowly I forgot about the people inside and how terrifying they were to me and focused instead on how good the cold air felt against my clammy skin.

When my heart had slowed down again a little I lifted my head carefully and stayed on the porch step for an extra couple of minutes until I felt I could stand safely again. I pushed to my feet with some difficulty and took my time walking down the path.

Pj had been the one to invite me to this party, so he’d been the one to walk us there and I hadn’t payed any attention to where we’d been going because the possibility of going home without him hadn’t actually occured to me, meaning I now had no idea where I was. I didn’t even know which side we’d approached the house from, so I turned right on a whim and headed to the corner of the street in the hope the road sign would mean something to me.

It didn’t.

The lady from the taxi service company was very understanding about it and patiently suggested the different parts of town I could be in until I recognised one, which was when she sent a taxi and informed me there’d be one there in less than ten minutes. I thanked her and hung up, then leant against the road sign shivering until the taxi arrived.

*****

My text tone chimed loudly from next to me and I groped around in the near dark to find it, wincing when the bright screen blinded me a little. I saw that I had one new message, so I opened it and squinted at my phone until the letters came into focus.

_Hope you got home alright ^.^ - Dan x_

Who the hell was Dan? Why was he texting me at this unholy hour?

_Sorry but who are you?_

I turned my phone on silent before he could reply and put it back on my bedside table, facedown so the screen lighting up when he replied wouldn’t wake me again, then rolled over and drifted back off to sleep.

*****

When I finally got out of bed it had passed midday and my stomach was growling angrily at the lack of food since last night, so I went straight to the kitchen and picked up the nearly empty box of cereal, carrying it though to the living room to eat it dry in front of the TV. It had been pretty obvious from the moment I’d woken up that today was destined to be a lazy day, so I spent the following couple of hours playing Mario Kart on the DS whilst watching Babe. I even put the DS down for the final few moments as the farmer told the pig, “That’ll do pig. That’ll do.”

When the film was over and it was officially late afternoon and I’d decided it was probably time to go take a shower and accidentally spent the following hour in there, relaxing more and more until I was sleepy enough to crawl back into bed and sleep until morning. I shut the water off slightly unwillingly and stepped out of the shower and straight into bed, barely taking the time to dry myself off. I was just starting to drift off when I remembered about the text last night from a certain Dan.

I reached an arm over lazily and picked it up clumsily, fumbling with it in the dark to find the home button and feeling a bit surprised to see I had four new messages from him.

_We talked really briefly at the party :) x_

_You didn’t look very well so I was a bit worried :P are you feeling any better now? x_

_Fuck I just realised what time it is, sorry! Goodnight Phil :) x_

_Good morning ^.^ x_

I couldn’t help but smile a little at this stranger’s messages. I couldn’t even remember his face but he seemed rather sweet, so I tapped out a reply.

_Oh right! Yeah I got home fine but a long conversation with the taxi operator was needed to figure out where I was first :P_

My finger hovered over the x, and before I could change my mind I pressed it and sent it off. I stared at my phone screen for a couple of minutes, willing him to reply quickly, but when my phone screen stayed dark I sighed and put it down again next to me, screen up so I’d know if he’d replied.

I fell asleep before he texted me back.

*****

I rolled over lazily and groaned into my pillow as my alarm kept blaring. I really didn’t want to go into work today. I let myself lay still for another moment to gather the energy to get up, then forced myself to throw the duvet off me and swing my legs over the side of the bed, turning my alarm off.

Hardest part out of the way, I stood up and got dressed slowly, only barely awake. I straightened my hair equally slowly, running the straighteners over each bit methodically and by the time I was done I was marginally more awake and ready for my morning cup of coffee. My phone got shoved into my pocket and I drank my coffee while making myself a full English breakfast, so I only thought to check my messages when I’d sat down at the breakfast bar and had started on the beans.

For some strange reason my heart started beating a little faster and a grin spread over my face when I saw that he’d replied.

_Haha that sounds like something I’d do XD glad you got home ok though ^.^ ugh I don’t want to go back to uni :/ x_

He was at uni? Well I felt old suddenly.

_Wait how old are you? x_

I waited for the reply impatiently, jiggling my leg up and down and eating more of my breakfast. It was left unfinished on the kitchen counter and I rushed out of the house and to the tube, internally cursing my inability to keep track of time over and over as I walked.

_Ahem… I’m 19 *blushes* (/.\\) how about you?_ x

So I was four years older than him. Not too bad, but it was still a slight shock to the system.

_Awww you’re so little :3 I’m 23 :P x_

My phone vibrated under a minute after I’d sent my reply, and I smiled to myself.

_Oh shut up! XD so what music do you like? x_

*****

_Would you like to meet up soon? :3 x_

I stared at my phone and took a few shaky breaths, my heart suddenly going crazy. Despite technically not really having met him in real life (I could barely remember the encounter so I didn’t think it counted), I couldn’t deny I liked him. Quite a lot actually. Enough to send my brain into dizzying spins at the prospect of meeting him properly, and definitely enough to make me freeze completely for a while as I stared at the seven simple words.

_Definitely :D when would you next be free? x_

The reply came through almost instantly.

_Well… Tomorrow after uni/work would be good :3 x_

Holy crap I could be seeing him tomorrow. I started to panic slightly, my palms slightly sweaty as I imagined all the things that could go horribly wrong. What if that awful nightmare about leaving the house without pants came true? What if in real life we had nothing to talk about? How would Dan react to finding out how awkward I actually was?

I forced all the thoughts out of my mind with great difficulty and made myself take a few deep breaths. It would all be fine. I had been talking to him pretty much non stop for weeks and not once had we run out of conversation topics. We’d even found a way to talk about not having anything to talk about for heaven’s sake, seeing him tomorrow would be great once I got past the initial nerves. If I could avoid doing anything too stupid in the first few minutes that would be nice too, so I sent up a silent prayer to the awkwardness gods asking them to please show me some mercy tomorrow.

_Tomorrow sound great to me :3 what do you wanna do? x_

_We could watch Mockingjay if you haven’t seen that yet? x_

_HELL YES X_

_It’s a date :D x_

Oh crap. It was a date.

*****

_Where are we meeting again? x_

I was stood near the M&M shop in Picadilly Circus and was looking around me, eyes scanning the crowd for anyone I recognised. I’d admitted to Dan the day before that I actually couldn’t remember what he looked like and although he’d acted all hurt about it he had given me a description. I was apparently looking for someone with brown hair with a fringe similar to mine but going in the opposite direction and he’d said he was a couple of inches taller than me. He’d also said he usually dressed ‘as depressingly as possible.’

_Pretty much exactly where you’re standing ;) x_

I looked around me again and hoped he’d show himself, but I could still only see a steady stream of people walking past.

_I can’t see you, where are you? :( x_

_See if you can find me ;) hint: I’m staring right at you x_

I tucked my phone away and looked at all of the people standing still instead, dismissing all of the women and the people shorter than me immediately. Most of the remaining people were busy with their phone, and then at last my eyes fell on a slightly distant figure with his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

I took a few hesitant steps closer, and when I saw a fringe sweeping over his forehead I sped up a little until I could see his face. He was looking at me intently, was definitely tall, he had brown hair like Dan had described and his cheeks were tinged slightly red, but this couldn’t possibly be my Dan. He looked too far out of my reach to be my Dan.

“Hey Phil,” he said so quietly I barely heard him.

Ok, so it was the same person I’d been talking to for the past few weeks. Fuck he was hot.

“Hi,” I replied, my voice coming out as a high pitched squeak.

He grinned at me, two dimples appearing out of nowhere, and stepped forwards to hug me tightly.

“Nice to meet you properly,” he whispered into my hair as I wound my arms around his waist.

“Nice to meet you properly too.” I kept hugging him for another minute or so, then pulled back a little to look up at him. “Go to the cinema now?”

He nodded happily and we started walking in the direction of the cinema. He tried a couple of times to start a conversation but we kept getting separated by the hordes of people heading home after work, until eventually he reached out and slipped his hand in mine hesitantly. I kept my gaze down but I curled my fingers around his hand a bit more tightly and allowed myself a small smile so he knew it was fine by me.

Even when we were past the busier area and could avoid being separated easily he didn’t show any inclination to taking his hand back, which sent a little thrill through me. By the time we got to the cinema we were walking so close together that our shoulders were brushing against each other with each step and that I could smell hints of him despite my near frozen nose.

We walked into the cinema and both audibly sighed in relief as the warm air hit us, then laughing a little at the other. As it turned out, he had a really cute laugh too. It was a lot more high pitched than his voice and his eyes crinkled a little bit at the corners and I almost kissed him. Almost.

We got the tickets and a big bucket of popcorn to share, then went through the door to the film and were plunged into near darkness as we tried to find two free seats next to each other in the packed room. Dan found them first, dragging my behind him to the back and squeezing past everyone to the seats near the middle of the row, getting settled with the popcorn bucket very quickly. Half the popcorn was gone before the film ever started playing.

I couldn’t help letting out a little squeal when the lights turned off completely to signal the film was starting and I bounced up and down in my seat a few times excitedly. Dan chuckled and leaned over to wrap an arm around my waist and pulled me against him so I was resting surprisingly comfortably against both the arm rest and him. The perfect position for hiding in his shoulder whenever anything sad or even vaguely scary happened, and each time I did I felt his heart pounding and setting mine off too.

When the film finished we stayed in the cinema room until after everyone had left the room and the credits had stopped rolling, both of us reluctant to leave the position we were in. Eventually the cleaners came in and politely asked us to leave, so I forced myself to get up, though I did take his hand again as compensation.

“That was a good film,” he stated happily as we walked to my bus stop. For some reason he’d insisted on taking me to my bus stop before he went home, claiming that his bus wouldn’t show up for ages anyway. I wasn’t sure I believed that but the selfish part of me wasn’t about to object to getting to spend a bit more time with him.

“It was,” I trilled back in a sing song voice, tugging him to a stop gently when we’d reached my bus stop. “This is me.”

Dan pulled a sad face. “I don’t want you to go yet.”

“I don’t really want to go either, but we can easily arrange to meet up again soon, ok?”

He agreed and we stood in silence for a moment, still holding hands and facing each other until Dan shuffled a little closer. I did the same until our lips were a scant inch apart, and then we were kissing and his hands were going up to my hair as I clung to the front of his jacket and giggled internally at the fact that he still tasted of popcorn.

He pulled away after a few minutes, panting softly, and whispered, “Your bus is here.”

I looked behind me and resisted the urge to tell the bus driver to just go on, instead pressing my lips against his again briefly and getting on the bus.

“Phil?” He called after me. “Do you want to be my boyfriend?”

I laughed and paid for my ticket, then turned back and called back a loud, “Yes, definitely!”

He shot me a thumbs up and a wide grin as the doors closed and the bus pulled away, and I waved back through the window with an equally big smile on my face.

My boyfriend was adorable.


	11. Tutoring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil sucks at maths and Dan volunteers to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more to go I'm so close to being done omg

**Word Count: 3572** **  
**

**Phil’s POV**

I burst into the classroom gasping for breath and stared at the people surrounding me for a moment with wide eyes.

“Why are you late?” The teacher asked from behind her desk, not even looking up at me as she continued clicking away on her computer.

I blushed and started rambling nervously, knowing what I was doing but unable to stop myself. “My bus was late and then when I got here I kind of went into the wrong class and didn’t realise until the teacher started handing out physics sheets and then when I put my hand up to leave she asked me a physics question and wouldn’t let me go until I answered it and I couldn’t answer it and she started yelling at me and -”

The teacher cut me off impatiently, “There’s a free seat over there, I suggest you stop talking and sit in it.”

“Yes miss,” I mumbled back, heading towards the seat she’d indicated with my head down.

Once I’d gotten settled in my seat and gotten out my calculator and pen I looked around at the others, wondering what we were meant to be doing. They were all hunched over various sheets of paper, so I looked down at my desk and pulled the exercise sheet towards me, staring at it when I saw the questions. I had no idea what any of it meant. Literally nothing looked familiar, so I glanced to the side at my neighbour, slightly panicked.

“What are we meant to do with these?” I hissed at him quietly, tapping the sheet with my pen.

“Feed them to your pets, obviously,” he muttered as he glanced at me and rolled his eyes a little. “You’re meant to answer the questions moron, how hard is it to figure that out?”

He turned back to his work, blond hair falling forwards into his eyes. He was cute but clearly also a complete douchebag, so I sent him a scowl he didn’t see and went back to trying to decipher the weird equations.

It became clear very quickly that unless I managed to swap brains with someone there was no way I was going to be able to answer any of these. I didn’t even know how to begin answering the questions that were only worth one or two marks, let alone the ones worth seven or eight, so instead I turned my attention to a quickly expanding doodle of flower vines twining together and twisting between the questions intricately. I focused all my attention on only that for the rest of the lesson in an attempt to ignore the fact that I was one day into college and already doomed to fail at least one of my subjects.

Unfortunately I was so focused on my doodle that when the teacher came around to collect in the papers I didn’t notice until she was stood in front of me and clearing her throat loudly.

“Even if you were late and missed the instructions, I don’t believe any teacher has ever asked any student to draw flowers on a test paper, so would you mind explaining why you’ve answered none of the questions and instead covered the page in doodles?”

I felt myself automatically recoil a little, and just shook my head at her, lifting my shoulders in a shrug.

“You might want to seriously reconsider if you should doing maths at A Level,” she said with a slight smile.

She started to move away to collect the rest of the sheets and I was vaguely aware that most of the class’ eyes were glued to me, but that smile made something in me tighten and snap and I felt my mouth open without my permission.

“I won’t need to, thanks.”

My heart seemed to miss a beat as I waited for her to turn around and use her evil teacher powers to behead me for snapping back, but she just kept collecting sheets and barely glanced in my direction.

“We’ll see.”

She picked up the last sheet and dismissed the class, picking her way through the desks and students carefully.

I wasted no time in slinging my bag over my shoulder and hightailing it out of the room so I wouldn’t be the last person in there with her, slowing down as soon as I was out of sight of the door. I blended in with the rest of the students streaming out easily and soon I was standing outside squinting around in the sun.

Realising I didn’t know if I had a break now or not I fumbled around in my bag for my timetable, and wasn’t sure if I was pleased or disappointed to see that I didn’t have another lesson until three and a bit hours later. Other than spending that time thinking about how I was doomed and going to fail college, I couldn’t think of much to do, so I started meandering slowly towards where I thought the front gates were so I could go out into the town and explore.

I hadn’t had a chance to look around the town yet, I just knew my new college seemed to be right in the middle of a high street, or at least a far too long street with a lot of shops that I’d had to practically run past earlier this morning. Trust the bus to be half an hour late on my first day of college, but thank goodness for Google maps or I would most probably have managed to get hopelessly lost amid all the brick buildings and badly paved roads that all looked the same to me.

After I’d pressed my new college ID card against the scanner to be let out of the tall iron gates I took a moment to look down the long road on both sides of me to try and gauge which side would have more things of interest to me. I’d just decided to go left when a small breeze blew by from the right, carrying the smell of something warm and sweet with it. My feet started moving in the direction the smell had come from without me giving them the conscious command to do so, and my nose automatically tried to pick up another trace of the smell.

It took less than a minute to arrive at the source of the smell, and I rolled my eyes at my stomach. Of course it had taken me less than five minutes to track down the nearest bakery, I thought, eyeing the cakes and muffins and cookies and rolls on display, and the rows of bread stacked on shelves behind the counter. Deciding which kind of sweet baked good I wanted wasn’t going to prove easy.

I’d just about narrowed it down to two kinds of muffin and a donut when I heard the door to the bakery open, the slight breeze moving a few strands of hair into my eyes. I pushed them back without thinking and looked up at the guy who’d just come in. He shot me a smile and made a beeline for the counter, where called out for the owner of the bakery, apparently a woman called Gemma.

I heard her yell something back about being covered in flour and needing him to wait for a minute, but I was too transfixed to pay attention properly. The guy was gorgeous. Chestnut brown hair that dipped down in a fringe over his left eye, his hair a similar style to mine, and while he was facing away from me, more noticeably, trousers that had dropped to about halfway down his butt, the thick belt clearly doing nothing to help. The sonic boxers on display made me stifle a giggle, and I dropped my gaze quickly when he started to turn in case he realised what I was laughing at.

When I raised my head again to continue trying to decide between the two muffins, now having decided not to go for the donut, I saw him watching me and immediately felt my cheeks start to heat up.

“Hi,” he said cheerfully. “Aren’t you in my maths class?”

“Um,” I hesitated, trying to decide how useful it would be to deny it and then never show up to that class again. “I don’t think so?”

He shook his head and squinted at me a little, clearly trying to remember. “No, I’m sure you are, didn’t you arrive late with some sort of physics related excuse and then doodle flowers all over the question paper?”

Ok, so I’d attracted a bit more attention than I thought.

“Maybe… But who knows, it could have just been my doppelganger on the loose trying to give me a bad name at college. Obviously I’m not stupid enough to get on the teacher’s bad side this early on in the year.”

He chuckled and nodded understandingly. “I’ll be sure to let you know if I see your doppelganger running round and causing more trouble then.”

I was about to thank him when a short young woman with curly brown hair walked in through the door behind the counter, drying her hands on her white apron and looking at them in dismay when they came back covered in sticky looking dough.

“I give up, seriously, no matter what I do I never seem to be a hundred percent clean when I’m in here, there’s always a bit of flour or a remnant of dough or even some bloody egg stuck to me,” she informed me with a shake of her head. “Anyway, how can I help?”

“Which one would you recommend, the banana and walnut or the chocolate chip muffin?”

“Banana and walnut, definitely. Anything else?”

I shook my head and smiled at her politely.

“Ok then, Dan could you sort that please I need to go wash my hands again,” she said to the guy still standing behind me, lifting her hands to show off the lumps of dough stuck to them.

He sighed but walked around the counter and grabbed a paper bag and a small metal tong, sliding aside the glass door covering the display from behind and carefully selecting the biggest muffin. He dropped it into the paper bag and folded the top over a few times, then held it out to me with a smile.

“Bossy older sisters, eh?”

I took the muffin and dug around in my bag for my wallet, but when I took out a five pound note and offered it to him he waved it away with a wide grin, dimples appearing on both sides.

“On the house, because you’ve had a crappy day so far.”

I suddenly felt a whole lot more pleased with the muffin and beamed back at him. "Thank you!”

“It’s nothing,” he said, laughing at how excited I looked, and grabbed a chocolate covered donut for himself before sliding the glass door back into place.

His sister walked back through the door and raised her hands in the air triumphantly. “They’re clean! It’s a miracle! Look at them! Aren’t they glorious,” she sighed, obviously content.

“Well now that you’re a little bit more presentable, maybe it’s time for proper introductions,” Dan said, turning to me. “This is my older sister, Gemma, and Gemma, this is -” he broke off, looking at me for a moment. “Actually I don’t know who this is, what’s your name?”

“Phil,” I replied, feeling a little foolish that I hadn’t thought to introduce myself before.

“Gemma, this is Phil. He’s in my maths class and this may be both the first and last time you ever see him because to say our teacher hasn’t taken a liking to him would be an understatement.”

Gemma pulled a face. “Who do you have?”

I looked at Dan helplessly, at a complete loss for what our evil teacher was called.“We have Helen, she started the class by giving us a motivational talk about how most of us would probably benefit greatly from dropping out of maths now because we wouldn’t have what it takes to scrape even an E. Lovely woman,” he commented sarcastically.

Suddenly I was quite happy to have missed the first part of the lesson - my physics interrogation sounded far more pleasant now that I thought about it.

“Oh I remember her, all my friends hated her guts. At the end of year 13 they left her a card telling her thanks for everything and a cake that consisted of mostly their spit. Not the nicest thing ever, but she’d made them cry plenty of times so fair enough in my opinion.”

Dan looked at me, eyes sparkling, and pointed at his sister. “That. We need to do exactly that if she doesn’t get miraculously nicer soon.”

I agreed, and after chatting to Gemma a bit more she declared that she had to get back to work before the lunchtime rush and Dan and I left the little bakery.

I’d never been to the area around our college before, and Dan had lived there his whole life and claimed to know every single nook and cranny of this part of the city, so I decided to test him and brought up a list of places for him to find with the help of Google. We spent the rest of our lunch time walking from the one destination to the next and I was amazed by how easy it was to talk to him, the conversation flowing easily. By the end of lunch I’d declared myself the winner of our little game because Dan had failed to get us to a small tailor’s, with him protesting heavily and claiming that he’d just misheard.

We both knew I’d won really.

*****

The second Helen left the room I was banging my head on the desk and groaning to myself at how hard this subject was.

Dan patted my shoulder sympathetically and I buried my face in my arms.

“She was right, I need to drop maths and take something else instead. At least I’d have a chance of passing that,” I sighed, my voice muffled by my jumper.

Dan didn’t say anything for a bit, and I lifted my head to look at him curiously, wondering what he was thinking about.

“Dan?”

He looked at me blankly for a few seconds, then resurfaced from his thoughts and shook his head a little as if to clear it.

“Sorry, was just thinking about something. If you want to change subjects then you have just under two weeks to hand in the form to do it, but I know you don’t really want to drop it, you’re just struggling with it right now. I’m ok with it, so would you like me to tutor you a bit?”

I considered it and decided I had nothing to lose by letting Dan give tutoring me a go, and nodded, still a little hesitant. “Are you sure you want to waste your time trying to explain this stuff to me?”

“I wouldn’t be wasting my time,” he replied instantly. “I want to help, and this seems like as a good a way to do it as any. Plus it’s not like I’m going to object to spending more time with you.”

My stomach did a little flip at his words, and I couldn’t help but feel rather chuffed that he wanted to spend more time with me, despite the fact that we spent plenty of time together already and it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me.

“In that case, yes please. But I’m only going to give you a week because I think sorting the forms for changing subjects and getting all the needed signatures could take a while.”

“Brilliant, we start lessons this lunchtime. Every lunchtime and every free we have together will be spent on maths until this time next week, agreed?”

“Agreed.”

I turned back to the questions in front of me and sighed deeply. I’d need every single minute of those tutoring sessions if I was to have any hope by next week.

*****

“It’s too hard,” I moaned, my head resting on the table.

“No it’s not, now come on, try again,” Dan commanded sternly, his pen tapping against the table like it had been during every session. That was the only indication I ever got that he was getting just as frustrated as me - the more exasperated he felt, the faster the pen started tapping. Right now he was pretty damn annoyed.

I raised my head covered my face with my hands, glaring at the question through my fingers. “Ok, I get how you got the first part, but where the hell did that come from?”

I pointed at the random 14 in one of the equations that seemed to have appeared from nowhere, and Dan wordlessly started working it out again to show me, and after what felt like an age of staring at the numbers it finally clicked.

“I get it now! So to get the final answer to you just square that and divide it by four?”

“Yep,” he said, sounding significantly more cheerful than he had before. “Want to try another one?”

I made a face but nodded, sipping from my water bottle as Dan found another question like it for me to do.

It was a slow and torturous process, but I was definitely getting better at it. We still had a couple more days before I had to decide, but the chances of me choosing to continue with it were undoubtedly higher than they had been before Dan had started to help me.

*****

Today was our final day of tutoring, and I could tell Dan was just as nervous as I was. He’d spent most of the night before making a test for me to take now, and what I got on it would help me to determine if it would be a good idea for me to continue or not.

We sat opposite each other at a table in the little bakery, tucked away in the corner and working our way through a pile of cookies that Gemma had made especially, having been told about our plans. I had half an hour to finish the test, and Dan was looking at my working out and answers upside down, his fingers brushing against mine occasionally when he reached for another cookie, or when I did something right for a particularly hard question as a silent well done.

If anything he was making concentrating on the questions about ten times harder because each time his fingers stroked over my knuckles or brushed my wrist I felt a little jolt go through me, the area he’d touched me always seeming to tingle slightly, no matter how brief the contact. I didn’t mind the distraction at all if I was being honest with myself.

I finished the test with a couple of minutes to spare and leaned back in my chair, stretching and feeling very aware of Dan’s eyes on me.

“Done?”

I nodded, and fiddled with my sleeves, pulling them over my hands and back again constantly as I waited for him to finish marking it and tell me how I’d done. I thought it had gone ok, but the more I thought about it as I waited the more unsure I was of that.

Finally, Dan looked up, expression unreadable, and he slid the piece of paper across the table to me. I took a deep breath and looked down at it, and at the very top Dan had written 89% with balloons and confetti doodled around it.

I stood up and walked around the little table and pulled Dan up so I could give him a huge bear hug.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you so much,” I chanted in a whisper, hugging him even tighter. “Oh my God I could actually kiss you right now, thank you!”

He pulled back from the hug and looked me dead in the eye. “Go for it.”

It took me a second to cotton on to what he meant, and when I did my heart started beating double time and my cheeks heated up a little.

I leaned in, slowly, not sure if he meant it or not, and with a little impatient huff he closed the rest of the distance and pressed his lips to mine. He tasted of cookies and chocolate and coffee and he brought his hands up to cup my face, his thumbs stroking along my cheeks as I wound my arms around his neck, deepening the kiss.

“Guys! Oi! Cut it out! Dear Lord, PDA much?”

I broke the kiss off and looked at Gemma a bit dazedly, wondering what she was getting so hyped up about until I came to a little more and noticed the many strangers staring at us, some smiling and some just shaking their heads or rolling their eyes at our teenage antics as they waited in line to be served. Oops.

Dan just laughed and waved at the customers cheerfully, then grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the bakery.

“So, are you keeping maths?”

I smiled widely at him. “Only if I get to keep my current tutor. He’s quite brilliant you know.”

“That can definitely be arranged,” he said, grinning happily.


	12. Delaying Trains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan can’t help but take pity on the stranger sprinting towards the train doors as fast as he can, and a stern telling off from the conductor later the two dorks are officially partners in crime (well, close enough).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My cat just sat on my face and bit me when I tried moving her and I can't call for help cos it is past three in the morning and I have been at this for three hours now holy shit

**Word Count: 4808  
Dan’s POV**

The tannoy came on, the conductor’s voice garbled and not really understandable, and the slight squawk of the microphone as it switched on was enough to divert my attention from my book. I took the break from reading as a chance to gulp down some more of my fast cooling tea, briefly glancing out of the window at the station before turning back to my book. Before I could start reading again, however, it clicked in my brain that I’d just seen something that didn’t quite fit, so I turned back to the window and squinted out of it slightly.

All the way at the other end of the platform there was a man sprinting for the train, his tie flapping over his shoulder and his briefcase looking like more of a hindrance than anything, constantly banging into his legs as he ran. As he neared and grew bigger, I could make out more of him, like the expression of pure panic on his face, presumably because he was going to miss the train. It was going to be close, but I could already hear the doors beeping to signal that they were going to close any moment.

The running man seemed to hear it too, his eyes widening more and he somehow managed to run even faster and for a couple of seconds I thought he might just manage to slip through the closing doors, and then somehow he tripped, his briefcase flying from his grasp and bursting open when it hit the ground. He scrambled up and dropped to his knees again next to his briefcase, stuffing the escaped sheets of paper back in and snapping it shut, then looked up with a forlorn expression when he realised he’d missed his chance.

I wasn’t sure what it was about that expression, but something in it had me leaping up from my seat and half running down the carriage to the doors, and I got to them just in time to squeeze my arms into the narrow gap, forcing the doors apart with a little difficulty. I wedged one of my legs into the opening too and used it to keep one of the doors from closing yet, pushing the other with both arms.

I stuck my head out of the train, waving one arm madly, and shouted at the top of my lungs, “Come on!”

He looked up and only took a split second to register what was happening, staggering to his feet and bursting into a sprint again as I kept pushing at the doors. I was really hoping the conductor wouldn’t decide he didn’t care and set off anyway, because I was very much screwed if he did.

The man skidded to a stop next to me and ducked under my arm, immediately collapsing on the floor and leaning back against the other set of doors, tipping his head back and closing his eyes as he tried to catch his breath.

“Thank you,” he panted, “so much.”

I sat down opposite him once the train started moving again, grinning widely from the adrenaline rush, and said, “You’re welcome. But if I get banned from trains permanently cos I’m a danger to their departure times or something, I’m going to blame you.”

He let out a short laugh, his eyes still closed and his breath still coming in pants, and agreed.

“I’m Phil, by the way,” he added.

“I’m Dan, nice to break what’s probably a very important train rule with you.”

He opened his eyes for a moment to grin at me, his tongue poking out from between his teeth slightly and his breathing still irregular, but thankfully starting to sound less like a steam engine.

I got to my feet when he finally managed to regain his breath and was just leaning down a little to offer him a hand up when I heard someone loudly clear their throat behind me. I turned my head to look at who it was, hand still extended towards Phil, and I felt a jolt of nerves when I glimpsed a conductor’s uniform behind me.

I looked back at Phil and pulled a worried face at him, my mind racing ahead to try and figure out if delaying a train on purpose was a punishable offence or not. His mouth twisted into a barely noticeable frown in reaction to my worry, but he accepted my hand up and turned to the conductor with a bright smile.

“Hello,” he said pleasantly, straightening his tie a little.

The conductor ignored him in favour of giving me a death glare, her voice pitched low with a clearly pissed off tone.

“What the hell were you thinking when you decided to stop the doors from closing and half hang out of the carriage while waving like an idiot? What if I hadn’t noticed and had given the all clear signal for the train to depart? Does death by falling out of a train sound like a particularly pleasant experience to you?”

I automatically opened my mouth to retort sarcastically, but something about her reminded me a little too much of my strict year eight Spanish teacher for comfort, so I snapped it shut again and shook my head meekly.

“Then don’t bloody do it again, alright?”

I nodded and hoped she felt satisfied enough with my telling off to leave now, but she only nodded back at me, stern expression still in place, and turned to Phil instead, her mouth pressing into an even thinner line as she regarded him.

“Try just showing up on time so we can avoid stuff like this. Or accept that you’re going to be late and wait for the next train like normal people do, but getting your friend to hang out of a train and pretty much risk their life for the sake of you not missing it is damn stupid.”

Phil kept his gaze straight down at his shoes and blushed furiously, nodding in the same slightly scared way I had.

She shook her head disapprovingly at our idiocy one more time and moved on, marching out of our carriage and into the next, probably to yell at some poor kid that they had to keep their shoes off the seats.

I waited until the door had safely slid shut behind her, then whispered, “Go, go, go, before she comes back!”

I led the way down the carriage to where my bag thankfully still sat on one of the four seats facing each other, and cleared my coat and bag away onto just one seat so there was enough space for both of us to sit down. He took the seat next to the one opposite me and leaned his head against the window, his legs stretched out in front of him with his feet disappearing under the seat next to me.

“So why the manic running?” I asked, chuckling a little at the way his cheeks immediately started tinting pink again.

“I overslept,” he mumbled. “I have a job interview today and I overslept because I am a complete moron. This was the last train I could get without being late, so getting to the station and seeing that it was about to leave was a tad stressful. Thanks again for getting me on the train.”

He grinned at me slightly bashfully then, his tongue slipping out between his teeth again and making my stomach do a little flip at how adorable he looked.

“Always happy to serve and protect good citizens,” I replied, and struck my best Superman pose.

Phil laughed and asked, “Is that even a Superman thing?”

“Probably not but it works ok?” I mock glared at him for daring to question my borrowed Superman duties, but ended up smiling at him when he gave in and joked that it was a shame that there wasn’t a wind machine.

He ended up telling me a bit more about the job he was hoping to get and I told him about how I was on my way to visit my grandmother as she got lonely a lot, and how I stayed over every other weekend in the hope that it made her feel at least a little better. By the time we started approaching his station we were skipping from the one topic to the other effortlessly and laughing like we’d been friends for years, so naturally I asked him for his number before he left.

He accepted my phone with a wide smile and started tapping in his number, but accidentally cancelled adding his contact just as we the train pulled in at his station. He hastily entered his number again and dropped the phone onto the seat next to him quickly when he was done, muttering apologies as he grabbed his briefcase and rushed to the yet again already closing doors.

I stood up to see how it would play out, obviously hoping that he managed to get out and to the interview on time, and couldn’t help smiling a little when I saw him jam his briefcase into the gap and push the doors apart the same way I had.

I sat back down when the train started moving again and waved back at a slightly sheepish looking Phil, then quickly gathered my things and settled myself in a corner in the next carriage before the conductor came after me to scare me some more.

When I dug my phone out of my pocket to text Phil so he’d have my number, I couldn’t find his contact at first, until I scrolled through all of them and came across a certain ‘Klutz’. Of course he’d call himself that.

_Good luck at your interview! :3 x_

*****

I was sat at the table with my grandma and was in the process of gradually waking myself up with a cup of strong coffee and a partially eaten cookie. She sat opposite me with a cup of coffee of her own, and flicked through the newspaper my granddad had always read, the knitting magazine she had delivered every month lying abandoned next to her breakfast plate.

Nan had been trying to get into knitting for as long as I could remember, and yet she’d never managed to stick with one project for long enough to even produce a single sock. She always said that knitting made her feel like more of a traditional grandma, like hers had been, but the various needles and brightly coloured balls of wool were seldom removed from the wicker basket next to her armchair.

I was stuffing the rest of the cookie into my mouth just as I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, so I wiped the crumbs from my fingers and retrieved it from my pocket, smiling involuntarily when I saw the screen was lit up with a text from a certain klutz.

_I GOT THE JOB!!! :D_

I grinned wider, and my grandma took notice. “What’s on that screen that’s making you look so happy?”

“Well, I met this guy on the train here yesterday -”

“Wait, wait, wait!” she interrupted, setting aside the newspaper and picking up her mug to cradle it between her hands, elbows on the table as she leaned forward with sparkling eyes. “Ok, I’m ready now, tell me everything!”

It had taken me a long time to come out to my family, despite being quite sure that they’d be supportive. It hadn’t been until two years ago that I decided it was time to tell them due to a relationship that had started to become serious enough for me to want to share it with them. For some reason I’d decided to tell my grandma before my parents, and not once had she made me regret it. Whenever I mentioned a new guy it made her turn into the far more childish person she still was inside, squealing at every cute detail and always wanting to know more.

I told her about being on the train and looking up just as Phil had come sprinting into the station, and how it had looked like he was going to miss the train. I explained how I’d felt bad enough to run to the doors and had managed to keep them open for just long enough for him to get on and how he’d turned out to be really sweet.

“He was really stressed about missing the train because he thought he was going to miss a job interview he had, and he just texted me to let me know that he got the job so I’m really happy for him,” I finished, looking down at my phone again and tapping out a reply.

_WOO CONGRATS!!! Try not to oversleep on your first day though, I can’t always be there to save the day ;)_

Nan waited until I looked up again to ask me more about him, demanding a description of what he looked like and wanting to know if there was a chance it would go somewhere.

As used to is as I was, I still couldn’t help giggling at her enthusiasm, but I answered her questions anyway, describing the way his fringe dipped down across his forehead in a style similar to mine and how it fell into his eyes a lot so he had to brush it back into place every few minutes. I told her about how he didn’t blink very often and how I was a little pleased about that because I couldn’t get enough of the bright blue of his eyes, as cheesy as it sounded.

By the time my phone buzzed again, she was beaming almost manically and seemed unable to stop, and when I read the text I felt the same huge grin spread across my face.

_True, true, so I guess it’s only logical for me to treat you to coffee sometime as thank you? x_

“What?” my grandma demanded, realising that something important must have happened from my smile.

“He wants to get coffee,” I mumbled back, still grinning down at my phone stupidly.

She punched the air in triumph, her coffee sloshing over the sides of her mug in the process and spilling over the table, but she just stood up and continued celebrating by doing a little dance over to where she kept the paper towels and back as I shook my head to myself.

She paused suddenly in the middle of mopping up the spilled coffee to half glare at me and say, “You can’t keep him waiting! Text him back and tell him that you’d like that, I need to know for sure that my grandson has got a date before he leaves!”

I laughed and watched as my fingers flew across my phone screen to type out my reply.

_Well I just told my nan about the guy I rescued from certain missing train doom asking me if I wanna get coffee and she has instructed me to tell you that I’d like that, so yes please :P x_

I frowned at the message for a moment after I sent it and decided it was probably best to clarify something.

_Don’t worry, I didn’t just say yes cos my gran told me to, I do actually want to :3 x_

It took less than a minute for the reply to come through, and I had to bite my lip to stop myself from grinning even wider as I read it, doing my best to school my features into a small smile instead.

_Haha phew, cos if the only reason you agreed was cos your gran forced you to, I wouldn’t say that’s a very promising start :P Sunday ok for you? :) x_

“Well, grandma, it looks like your grandson just got a sort of maybe date.”

I looked up to watch her clap her hands excitedly and bounce up and down a little on the balls of her feet, and couldn’t help feeling a warm glow a little at how happy she looked for me, despite it not even being an official date. I’d really lucked out with my grandma.

_Sunday is perfect, what time? :) x_

*****

I felt slightly awkward standing outside Starbucks and glancing up from my phone every few seconds to look for Phil, wondering if I should ignore his demands and go inside and get my own coffee instead of waiting for him to show up and buy me one. I was starting to understand why Phil was always so worried about showing up for his new job on time - he seemed to have some sort of curse on him that meant no matter how hard he tried he was always running late.

My phone buzzed in my hand and the screen lit up to show me a glimpse of the text Phil had just sent me. I unlocked my phone to look at it and scowled at my phone a little. He’d ruined my forming plan.

_I AM ON MY WAY I PROMISE, I WILL BE TEN MINS MAX AND YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO GET YOURSELF COFFEE OR GO INSIDE COS I WILL BE VERY SAD X_

I was about to lock it when my phone buzzed again, a new message from Phil popping up on the screen.

_Unless you’re cold or uncomfortable waiting outside, then go and sit down BUT NO BUYING YOURSELF ANYTHING X_

I shook my head slightly at the text and wondered for the hundredth time how a grown man could be so adorable.

_Ok fine but you’d better be here soon cos I want coffee and I literally only know the filter kind so you need to help me x_

I pocketed my phone and pushed the door to the coffee shop open, stepping in slightly hesitantly and wondering how long it would take them to kick me out for sitting down somewhere without buying something first. I decided not to risk it, and walked up to the counter to inspect the board behind it instead and realised that I really did need Phil’s help to order something as without him I was sure to fail quite spectacularly.

I scanned across the board at one name after the other and it started to dawn on me exactly how uneducated I was when it came to the different kinds of coffee. What the hell was a caramel macchiato? What was a flavoured latte supposed to be? Who came up with frappuccino? Where was the normal cup of coffee option?

I approached the barista warily and asked, “Sorry, I’ve never actually been to Starbucks before, do you have just coffee? Without a fancy name? With milk?”

She grinned at me and confided that she’d never been to a Starbucks either before she got her job there through a friend.

“I was so confused on the first few days when people kept asking me for things like a 'Tall Caramel Frappuccino Light Blended Beverage’! I almost got fired because I took so long making people’s drinks as I literally always had to look it up in the manual and follow the instructions step by step. You don’t want to know how many people were late to meetings in the morning because of me.”

I giggled a little at the image of the small brunette in front of me frantically dumping what was probably around thirty different ingredients in a takeaway cup and handing one cup of hastily made coffee after the other to a line of grumpy people in suits with briefcases. She had made me feel better about my coffee ignorance though, so I didn’t feel like a complete idiot asking her to please just make me something she thought was good.

“Well the caramel thing I just mentioned with a very long and complicated name is actually pretty good,” she told me.

“Great, could I get a medium of that please?”

She laughed and informed me that a medium translated into a grande here, then lifted up a section of the counter and invited me to join her behind it so she could show me how said complicated and fancy sounding drink was made.

“Is this even allowed?”

“Nope, but considering I am the only person serving today there isn’t much that anyone can do about it, so come on, time for me to look like a coffee genius. Plus, I’m not letting you touch anything so we’re good.”

I ducked under her arm and stood behind the counter silently, scared to touch something and accidentally break it.

“Ok, I know I said I wasn’t going to let you touch anything but that doesn’t mean you have to stand completely still in that one spot, you’re allowed to move,” she teased me, grabbing a glass cup from a pile next to a very big coffee machine and expertly flipping it the right side up by the handle.

She explained that most times the machine did the majority of it for her, and that all she did was make the finished drink look pretty, but that this time the machine was only used to produce a couple of espresso shots. She told me how it worked as she deftly scooped ice cubes into a blender and poured in milk and the espresso, squirting in caramel sauce from a plastic bottle after.

The barista paused and considered me for a moment, then nodded to herself and retrieved another plastic squeezy bottle from the row, adding more caramel coloured liquid to the mix.

“Caramel syrup,” she clarified when she saw me look at her questioningly. “You look like a caramel kind of person.”

She switched on the blender and left it while she cleared away the things she’d used and got a big can of whipped cream from the fridge in the corner. It took her less than a minute to poor the finished drink into the glass mug, squirt a large amount of cream onto it and dust it with cocoa powder. She squinted at the drink for a second, then grabbed the caramel sauce and squeezed that onto the tower of whipped cream too.

“Tada!” she announced, doing jazz hands either side of the drink.

“Alright, show off, I’ll admit I’m impressed but you can stop with the overly pleased smirk now,” I told her, sticking my tongue out at her.

“Nope, never! But just so I know, who did I just show how to make a caramel frappuccino?”

“Oh my God, I can’t believe we haven’t even introduced ourselves yet, I’m sorry! I’m Dan.”

“I’m Caitlyn, feel free to come back here if you want to learn about the making process of more overly complicated drinks.”

I carefully lifted myself onto the counter as she slid the drink towards me, nodding happily when I’d taken a sip of the drink and licking the cream from my lips.

“Yep, I am definitely coming back here, this is amazing!”

“Why thank you, only took me a year to perfect,” she joked. “But how come you decided to come into a coffee shop you knew nothing about? Just curiosity?”

I quickly explained how I’d managed to save Phil’s ass by delaying the train’s departure for just long enough that he managed to get on, and how we’d hit it off well enough that when he got the job he’d texted me to say he wanted to get coffee with me. I left out the part where he’d said I wasn’t allowed to get myself a drink before he got there in case she decided to side with him and confiscated my drink until he arrived.

Caitlyn winked at me suggestively and asked, “Sooo… Is he cute?”

I chose not to answer, opting to take another sip of my drink instead and looking anywhere but at her, but my quickly reddening cheeks seemed to have decided to answer for me.

She snorted and commented on how I definitely needed to work on my acting skills, just as the door opened and Phil finally walked in.

He scanned the place quickly and scrunched his nose in confusion when he didn’t spot me sitting at one of the tables, looking around again more carefully and chuckling when he clocked me perched on one of the counters with Caitlyn.

The smile was wiped off his face very quickly, though, when he saw me sipping from the frappuccino, replaced by a sad look.

“You were meant to let me treat you,” he said sadly, and Caitlyn turned and glared at me.

“You did not mention that part,” she gasped in mock offense. “I feel so used!”

I was torn between sticking my tongue out triumphantly at both of them and hanging my head in shame, but when I glanced at Phil’s sad pout I felt guilty enough to forget about acting smug and hung my head instead. I still pointed out that I hadn’t actually bought myself anything though.

Caitlyn clapped her hands together once and announced that she was just going to have to give both of us free drinks, then set about taking Phil’s order and making it in record time, even dusting chocolate powder cat whiskers on top of his cappuccino, shooting me a wink as she handed it to him.

Phil thanked her with a shy smile and stuffed his free hand in his pocket, shooting me a questioning look, so I hopped down from the counter and sent Caitlyn a little wave as I joined Phil, making a mental note to ask for her number later. I plucked at his sleeve a little to get him to look up at me and smiled at him widely when I saw the warmth in his eyes, relief flooding through me that he wasn’t actually sad or annoyed at me for not giving him the chance to treat me.

I led him over to a couple of comfortable looking armchairs in the corner and set down my coffee on the small table carefully before throwing myself down on one of the chairs, legs draped over the side   
as I shuffled around until I was satisfied with the level of comfort, only then reaching to the side to retrieve my drink and cradle it between my hands. When I looked up again I saw that Phil was still stood next to his chair, apparently having forgotten about sitting down as he watched me with a slightly bemused expression.

“What?”

He shook his head a little and smiled. “You’re aware she gave you coffee on the house and not the entire cafe on the house, aren’t you?”

I reclined further against the arm of the chair and waved grandly round the coffee shop.

“Of course I own the whole thing, maybe you’re just not aware that I own all coffee shops,” I huffed, sticking my nose in the air dramatically.

“Oh right, of course, totally my mistake,” he chuckled, settling into the armchair opposite me. “Though how you’ve managed to acquire all those coffee shops without actually knowing the first thing about coffee is beyond me.”

I just glared at his teasing tone and drank more of my fancily named coffee.

*****

We stood outside Starbucks, having finally been kicked out by Caitlyn (but not before I got her number and promised again to come by for more coffee making lessons) because it was closing time, and despite the chill of the late afternoon air we’d been standing there for a while, neither of us willing to say goodbye just yet.

Phil went quiet and seemed to come a little closer, alternating between looking down at his feet and watching me shyly from behind his fringe.

“Would you like to come round to mine for dinner?” I blurted loudly when he was only a foot away from me, feeling my cheeks immediately start turning pink at how I’d ruined whatever that had been.

The embarassment didn’t last long though, Phil’s answering beam chasing it away and making my heart beat a little faster, especially when he leaned in close again, eyes gleaming.

“Usually I would kiss you round about now, only your barista friend is staring at us, so I think it’ll have to wait until after dinner,” he half whispered, breath ghosting against my cheek when he leaned in even closer to press a soft kiss to my cheek.

Then he stepped back and smiled widely at me while I tried to calm the butterflies wreaking havoc in my stomach.

“So, which way is dinner?”

I reached forward and laced our fingers together to tug him gently in the right direction, melting a little when I felt him rub circles with his thumb over the back of my hand.

I gave up on calming the butterflies.


End file.
